This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Set in 1999, post-APartheid South African, this film begins with an elderly white brickworks manager who has a strong interest in long-distance running.He has been training some of his employees for a ultra-long-distance race, the Comrades Marathon. Deprived of this, he finds himself at a loose end.He then notices Christine, a young Blakc African woman who regularly runs long distances and has never had any training. She is an illegal immigrant, who faced hostility from some of the local Black Africans. When she is arrested, he gets her released and invites her to live with him. He has no sexual interest in her - she later describes it as being viewed like a racehorse.Christing several times asserts herself. The film culminates in her taking part in the actual race.I found that there was rather too much about the dull relationship between coach and runner. A better film would have shown flashbacks to the past of the race, not always open to blacks or women, and to the coach's own past as a runner. Still, it gave an authentic-seeming view of South Africa and the running culture.

Barry, a supervisor in a brick factory in Johanesburg, is a man that wants to train some of his workers for the grueling Comrade marathon. His superior comes to him early in the story to tell him he is replacing him with a younger, more capable black man. Barry, who is of retirement age, doesn't take the news kindly because it will separate him from the four athletes he is training and feels they will not have the discipline he demands of them.One day Barry discovers a young woman running. She is Christine, who shows all the characteristics to make an excellent long distance runner and who will do well at the Comrade. Barry takes her under his wing and even brings her to his suburban home, something that is not looked kindly by the white neighbors who object of the intrusion.Barry's demands and how he deals with the training of Christine makes the young woman leave him. She needs a job and has to find her own way in the world. As the marathon day comes close, Christine and Barry are reunited, but on her terms. Christine goes to win the race as the first South African black woman to do so.Jean Stewart's film doesn't seem to make up its mind where to go. It's not realistic the way he approaches the way he sets his story. One goes along, because it's a predictable feel good movie, where we know before hand how will it end.Armin Mueller Stahl is good as Barry, the man who has tried for the Comrade himself, and failed. Nthati Moshesh is appealing as Christine, a dark beauty who makes a valuable contribution to the film.

Armin Mueller Stahl plays a running coach in South Africa to perfection. He tried running the famous 90 Km "Comrade Marathon" when he was younger but never completed it. Now he is trying his best to achieve that missed goal by training a young African woman to succeed where he has failed. This story is not just about running, but about exceeding limits that you set for yourself and doing things that you did not think were possible. It also gives you a picture of whites and blacks in South Africa today. This is an uplifting movie which can be watched by the entire family.

This is a South African propaganda film wherein all the blacks and all the whites interact as if race has never been an issue. The utter lack of tension between the haves and have nots is so distracting that for awhile I thought that this was an intentional plot device and that there would eventually be some secret revealed to explain the phony harmony. No such luck.Whoever wrote, directed, and produced this movie knows very little about what real marathon running is like (many pudgy athletes easily cover 20-40 miles while not even one runner who looks like a long distance runner is shown!)..The female lead is very beautiful, and she can act, but she can't run. Her backstory is tantalizingly, but no details ever are offered to explain how this illegal alien has learned such perfect English, self composure, and good mental hygiene. She is the second lead in the film and all we know is that she can run (it would be nice to know why), and that she is smarter than and unafraid of all whites, men, and governmental authorities (why and how this is so is an unforgivable omission).I am almost always a big fan of Mueller-Stahl, but here he is given nothing to work with. He plays an embittered coach who at 60 still cannot train his athletes without reliving his own humiliating experiences in the same race 40 years before. The story unfolds in fits and starts, jumping over gaping plot holes while lingering forever on Mueller-Stahl's quite unbelievably self-absorbed and obviously ineffective dedication to training runners. By the day of the big race he is totally psychotic, becoming more and more unhinged the closer his runner comes to actually winning the race. Again, a little more backstory could have made his Germanic anal retentiveness less cliched.It is never made clear what the coach's goal for his prodigy is: to finish, to make it past the hill he himself couldn't conquer, or to actually win. All we know is that he treats her like a robot and screams annoyingly at her to always slow down. No wonder his methods are at one point referred to as "eccentric".This movie was made with an agenda to depict South Africa in insultingly inaccurate ways. Can anyone still spell apartheid?