Fast Girls (2012)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This film really gave me the impression that the creators really didn't know that much about athletics and just made this purely to cash in on the UK's Olympic hype. Fist of all it's implied that the main character is relatively unknown in athletics and springs out of nowhere to become part of the team GB World Championship athletics team. Yeah, that's not really how it works, if she was already getting times that were good enough to be in the running for a team GB place, people would have known about her. She would already have competed in many national competitions and made a name for herself before qualifying for Great Britain.Also the fact that they go on a night out and drink alcohol literally the night before an international competition doesn't make much sense. If that was how the GB team operated in real life, I'd be very worried, therefore it's obviously just a plot device put in place to create conflict failing to reflect any sort of reality.However those are just little gripes. What really brought this film down was the clichéd plot points. We've got the arguments in the team which threaten to stop them winning, the forced romance which breaks down due to a misunderstanding and character arcs like the main character not working well in teams and the rich girl whose father does away with her if she doesn't win. These have all been done before, are executed poorly in this film and lack any depth as we know full well what will happen the moment we see them.They could have included an interesting plot point which connects to athletics, such as the main character being offered performance enhancing drugs or maybe delving deeper into how the main character got into running. But no, you could pretty much put this film's storyline into any sports movie and it would still work. Well, I say work, what I mean is produce the same forced and bland garbage that these kind of films have developed into over the years.All in all, the characters have no chemistry, the film is detached from reality and the plot points are very predictable. Do I really need to tell you what happens in the end? Didn't think so.

This 91 minutes Chariots of Fire wannabe rises above its obvious cinema 'warts' and wins a gold for fun, fast entertainment. The fictional drama of a struggling UK relay team approaching a world championship race offers realistic action and lots of cliché drama. Elements of Chariots of Fire and Rocky abound and yet the cast, young, energetic and obviously devoted to the project create the necessary realism on the field if not off.Shania seeks to escape the trappings of her ghetto London neighborhood although the race card can not be played when three of the four team members are black. This brings us to the ever lovely California blond looking Lisa. Lisa is refreshing, rich and nasty. The latter no doubt related to her over bearing, domineering father, himself an ex-medal winner and very well played by veteran actor Rupert Graves.The film keeps us close to the real action, running! The final race score, Starlight by Matt Cardle (see the YouTube music videos) was spot on and a perfect match for the haunting action. The mix of slow motion, action and one nice overhead shot enhanced the final key scene. Will the girl from the wrong side of the tracks grab the gold ring? If you want to see the films much higher ratings check out its 82% critics and 65% audience at Rotten Tomatoes. This entertaining feel good sports movie deserves a wide audience. Give it a shot. Most likely you will be glad you did. Aside from all else be sure to watch and enjoy the final world championship race!

It is a lot of years now since I was last in a "proper" nightclub but I do remember my years working in work and feeling part of the places in a way that my mid-30's self really doesn't now. Anyway, at their best a club is loud with appropriate music (maybe not great music, but music that works in that context) and it creates a sense of feeling good and shared enjoyment that is quite a thing – people look good, nobody is self-conscious about their terrible dancing and generally people are enjoying themselves despite the fact that the night will probably not leave them with too much beyond the moment.So, why am I talking about this? Well to me this film reminded me of that experience, even more so given that the spirit of the Olympics was still resonating around the UK. The film follows an athlete who is from the wrong side of the tracks and has limited resources but yet manages to make it onto the Great Britain team; challenges come in the personal and professional type, but can she overcome? Well of course the answer is pretty obvious and so goes the film because this is a product that is marketed to clearly hit a vein of Olympics fever. As a film it is pretty basic; I'm pretty sure that if you sped up all the slow-mo bits that it would run to 60 minutes, not 90, and that if you took out all the scenes that had recent UK pop music over it then it would probably be only half that again. However, it still works for what it is – a "of its time" feel good movie.The film mostly focuses on low level set pieces, whether they be heavily sound tracked racing action or just generic social drama background – it is all filmed the same way; superficially and without heart. Indeed this is the core of the film – heartless and superficial; the characters don't ever appear as people, the scenarios are never fleshed out beyond the level of wallpaper and the film itself is keen to exist on this very simple level. In this regard it is of course weak – it never draws the viewer in but what it does do is provide simple stimuli in the construction. As a result the race is still engaging, the plot is still simply effective and it works. The cast are part of this as they play natural despite their paper thin characters and motivations. Crichlow leads the cast well – when the script gives her a little bit to work with she does it well, otherwise she is solid enough to carry it. James is not as good – a problem since she carries the weight for the tension; she doesn't convince and neither does that element of the plot. The supporting cast are generic but Graves, Benjamin, Burroughs and others do the job well enough for this. Clarke gets his face in again while Bradley James is good-looking at least.Overall this film works as a simple crowd-pleaser but this is not to suggest that it has any merit beyond the superficial, because it doesn't. The soundtrack is as important as the cast and, while they do a decent job, the script never does more than provide wallpaper to the style and "feel" of the film. It does still work in the way that an ugly person looks good in the drunken euphoria of a nightclub – but, while it is fun in the moment, you don't want to be waking up next to this film.

with a very loose Luke-warm screenplay, boring scenario and plot, tasteless dialog and marginal elementary acting of all actors and/or actresses, this movie in general, sucks although still barely watchable. this movie gave me an impression as if watching an African country's athletes fighting their future in track and field careers instead of the British young athletes. sorry, i did have such confusing impression as if i was watching a nowadays' south African track and field movie since the whites were the minority. these female sprinters were a new kind of sports species, they drank, drunk, party all night, white against the black, black against the white, rich against the poor, parents either divorced or separated or one of them disappeared, or both disappeared.....what a sad but over-the-top modern day rich countries' social infra structural tragedy. winning is everything, no matter what. need a sponsor, or many sponsors, otherwise, no gears, no training coach, no future. what a commercialized world.