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100An experience so engrossing it is like being buried in a new environment.
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100A landmark movie that becomes a priceless entryway into a distant land and its people, few of whom will ever seem as foreign and far away again.
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100Don't miss The Fast Runner. If you do, you will deprive yourself of not only one of the most intriguing feature-film projects in decades and enough plain-spoken anthropology for three credits at Harvard, but one of the most flat-out entertaining movies of the year.
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100This is quite possibly the best Canadian film of all time.
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100Stunning, fully formed masterpiece.
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100A gorgeous, engrossing, utterly alien and fresh movie that has the human truth and impact of classic Greek myth and the overwhelming beauty and mastery of the greatest epic films.
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100Some may find it slow. I found it utterly spellbinding.
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100So elemental in its means yet so cosmic in its drama, it could herald a rebirth of cinema.
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100Nearly three hours long, and deliberately paced at that, this first feature ever in the Inuit language is a demanding experience. But the rewards for those who risk the journey are simply extraordinary.
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100Not merely an interesting document from a far-off place; it is a masterpiece.
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100It is a ripping yarn and a spectacularly new and odd vision.
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100The first-ever screenplay written in the Inuit language, Inuktitut -- and the first time's a charm.
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90It's a difficult film to follow and at 172 minutes is maybe a half-hour too long. But simply as a sensory experience The Fast Runner is amazing.
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90The first REALLY great mythic film of the summer has arrived.
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90One of the most enthralling three hours you'll ever spend at the theater.
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90An authentic and thrilling glimpse into Inuit culture and tradition.
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90Exciting not as ethnography but as storytelling, as drama, and as filmmaking.
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89The perfect antidote to the summer heat in Austin, more refreshing even than a dip in our chilly holy waters of Barton Springs.
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88More than once during The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat), it's easy to forget you're watching a movie.
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88It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.
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88This long (nearly three hours), revelatory movie is both a thrilling adventure about endurance and survival, and an elegiac examination of centuries-old tribal culture, fast-fading in the new millennium.
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88Magically transports the viewer across time and space. As it does so, it becomes a humbling reminder of the universality of the human experience.
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88If you're put off by deliberate filmmaking (or subtitles, though the movie doesn't have much dialogue), you're in the wrong spot. If not, you'll see why voters gave "Atanarjuat," as it's officially called, a 2002 Oscar nomination for best foreign film.
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80Not only is it a reintroduction to a fascinating culture that has survived 4,000 years in a remote and most inhospitable climate, but it's also the first film ever directed by an Inuit filmmaker and featuring an all-Inuit cast.
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80At times it's plodding and inchoate, but there's certainly nothing else like it in the movies right now, and it has at least one great sequence.
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80Director Zacharias Kunuk captures that feeling well, but he never quite develops it into a theme epic enough to fill Atanarjuat's scope. His film is by turns mesmerizing and trying, with enough of the former to make the latter worthwhile.
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75Its refusal to draw solid lines between "good" and "evil" characters is more sophisticated than the psychology of most current commercial pictures. It's well worth a trek to a theater adventurous enough to show it.
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75By all means, buy a ticket to The Fast Runner, but don't go expecting a masterpiece; actually, in its first hour, the dramaturgy and staging of scenes set in igloos are cramped and amateurish.
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50It's an endurance test. Though never boring, the movie is a fairly long slog through the snow.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 37 out of 46
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Mixed: 3 out of 46
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Negative: 6 out of 46
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JohnB10How can you not like this film? The artistry, the storyline, the photography - it's all fantastic.
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MeredithP.8Unique film that shows a way of life.