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75A sports bio movie that I really enjoyed about a sport and sports hero I barely knew existed: the World Hour Record competition for bicyclists and its gutsy, tormented and most unusual champion, Graeme Obree.
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75It's an underdog story with teeth.
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75Boasts exciting competitive track cycling footage.
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67Obree's psychology is fascinating and, even though the competitive scenes mostly involve him racing against himself in a spectator-free indoor track, the movie manages to give its audience a suitable adrenaline rush here and there.
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63How many bicycling movies are there, let alone ones that know from frame geometry? "Breaking Away" is probably the champ, followed by "American Flyers," the hilariously awful Kevin Bacon bike-messenger movie "Quicksilver," and then we're already into "The Bicycle Thief " and "Pee-wee's Big Adventure." It's a small pack, and The Flying Scotsman rides close to the front by default.
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60A typically engaging performance from Johnny Lee Miller takes this slightly above the usual underdog movie cliche.
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Miller is key to the film's success, with his earnest, sweet-faced looks and evident dark side. He plays Obree with just the right understated intensity, a believable competitor who fights back fiercely with his wits and a few tight-lipped words.
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50The filmmaking is unremarkable, but the obsessiveness of the lead character is infectious enough to make this drama passable entertainment.
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50It's a shame it's not a better movie, but its small virtues include an uncompromising performance by English actor Jonny Lee Miller.
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While the world of competitive cycling can be extremely exciting, not every one of its events is captivating. A well-intentioned biopic about Scottish cycling maverick Graeme Obree, The Flying Scotsman is hampered by the fact that its hero earned his greatest renown for riding around and around on a velodrome … alone … for an hour.
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50Graeme Obree was a champion bicycler who, by all accounts, rarely took the easy way out. Too bad this movie version of his life doesn't follow suit.
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50A conventional underdog sports movie that should have been much more gripping.
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50Helmer Douglas Mackinnon does what he can to make the most of emotional bullet points and gloss over the lack of connective tissue.
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50Brian Cox does sturdy work as the minister who helps Obree combat depression, and first-time director Douglas Mackinnon gets a big assist from Obree himself, who doubled for Miller in some shots and filmed others with a camera strapped to his handlebars.
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50There's real triumph to Obree's story, and real adversity, too, but the film contents itself with the pretend versions of both.
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Scotsman not only lacks vision, a true sense of how to mesh Obree's sporting triumphs and personal setbacks, but it also lacks passion. What it needs, as strange and tacky as it may sound, is a bit more madness.
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38For a much better film about a similar story, rent "The World's Fastest Indian," with Anthony Hopkins on a motorcycle.
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30It has a terminal case of the cutes crossed with the labored earnestness of a disease-of-the-week melodrama.
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Positive: 3 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 0 out of 3
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AllanF.10Amazing story and a fantastic performance from Johnny Lee Miller go together to make a wonderfully honest and uplifting film.
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JamesC.9I thought the was a wonderful movie, but then again I am homosexual ! James Chidlow, Hoole (Chester).
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Alan9If you like biking and underdog films, you'll love this film.