As director Douglas MacKinnon said making a good sports film is difficult and the road is littered with heroic failures. This is a good film partly because it is about cycling, a minority sport every nuance of which is not ingrained on the public consciousness, and partly because it is a well made piece of work which tells an amazing story. It does take liberties with the Obree story as anyone who has read his book will notice, but these are generally fairly minor and do not detract from dramatic piece. The acting is universally great as you would expect from actors of the stature of Brian Cox, Stephen Berkoff etc, and Johnny Lee Miller does a superb job as tortured genius Graeme Obree. The message is uplifting by demonstrating that those who have had an unhappy childhood and suffer from a mental illness can go on and achieve a huge amount in life as Graeme did, despite many setbacks and intransigent officialdom.
Review of The Flying Scotsman
