Lavish and uplifting sports movie driven by finely honed performances, and home to one of the most iconic sequences in 1980s British film.
Comment
01/29/08
Chariots of Fire (1981)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 36 Fresh: 31 Rotten:5 Average Rating: 7.4/10
Consensus:
Decidedly slower and less limber than the Olympic runners at the center of its story, the film nevertheless manages to make effectively stirring use of its spiritual and patriotic themes.
Runtime: 2 hrs 4 mins
Synopsis: Director Hugh Hudson's absorbing drama, based on a true story, deals with the personal struggles faced by two very different long-distance runners competing for Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is a devout Christian who sees victory as a testament to the... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Ian Charleson, Ben Cross, Nigel Havers, Cheryl Campbell, Ian Holm
Reviews
Top Critic
Really this is an overblown piece of self-congratulatory emotional manipulation perfectly suited for Thatcherite liberals.
02/09/06
Top Critic
Now, 20 years later, it's dated. In some ways that actually benefits the film as its true age somehow helps its 1920s setting but other aspects suffer.
01/01/00
Top Critic
Like every element in this picture, the actors look right; they seem to emerge from the past, instead of being pasted on to it, as so many characters in historical movies seem to be.
08/01/08
Top Critic
No imbalance mars the pic, whose cross-the-board achievement lifts it to an impressive level of unified accomplishment.
03/26/07
Top Critic
This manipulative inspirational-religious sports drama, about the 1924 Olympics, benefited immensely from Vangelis stirringly brilliant score and editor Terry Rawlings slow-motion of the running sequences.
01/25/07
Emotionally lacking, Chariots of Fire is only limitedly entertaining as a piece of cinematic history and a glimpse into the history of a handful of Olympic hopefuls.
12/22/06
A pleasant, mildly inspirational movie but hardly worthy of all the accolades it received.
12/17/06
Top Critic
The battered Britons may have some excuse for enjoying this nostalgic re-creation of empire ideology, but what's ours?
12/17/06
worth watching despite providing another reason to put words "Oscar" and "overrated" in the same sentence
07/05/05
Director Hugh Hudson turns a relatively small story into a rhapsodic epic of spiritual and heroic dimensions.
02/06/05
A period piece that explores timeless themes of temporal ambitions and higher purposes, of commitment and sacrifice, of ability and spirit.
02/03/05
Most sport movies make winning the goal. Here, running is a metaphor for life, and the way these men run tells us volumes about their hearts.
01/15/05
This is strange. I have no interest in running and am not a partisan in the British class system. Then why should I have been so deeply moved by Chariots of Fire?
10/23/04
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