Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2011

It's an underdog story with teeth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 22, 2007

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2007

It is a straightforward biography but it treads so gingerly around his mental troubles that you feel something is missing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2007

It moves, but it never flies.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2007

Still, there's useful support from Brian Cox as a pep-talking priest, and Gavin Finney's long-take velodrome cinematography is frequently rather excellent.

| Jun 29, 2007

The sinking Scotsman is more like it.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 29, 2007

What cripples the film's success as a sporting movie is the fact that its director, Douglas Mackinnon, struggles to find a way of making the climactic cycle races interesting.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 29, 2007

A typically engaging performance from Johnny Lee Miller takes this slightly above the usual underdog movie cliche.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 29, 2007

There's much to admire here, even if you're not into cycling. Douglas Mackinnon's made a fine fist of a great little underdog story.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Jun 28, 2007

Fails to get under the character's skin.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 26, 2007

Never quite manages to whip its disparate story elements into an emotionally moving whole.

Full Review | May 14, 2007

Manages to be both an unsatisfying human drama and a confusing sports movie at the same time. Fans of both genres will be disappointed.

| May 7, 2007

Besides, rousing sports stories with even a smidgen of talent behind them always seem to choke me up (if only a little bit) and this one definitely does that and then some.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 6, 2007

It's a story that practically begs to be made into a film, albeit preferably one less pat than The Flying Scotsman.

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 5, 2007

| Original Score: 3/6 | May 5, 2007

A classic tale of the heroic little guy that goes beyond the sport of cycling, told with elegant restraint in this sensitive and beautifully rendered film.

| May 4, 2007

For all its dramatic manipulation, The Flying Scotsman succeeds, in a modest way, because it's true.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 4, 2007

[The] cinematography provides a unique perspective on a racing cyclist's view as Obree goes round and round, monotonously, on a slanted track. But an equally compelling look from the inside of Obree's illness offers the film's most stunning moment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2007

The filmmaking is unremarkable, but the obsessiveness of the lead character is infectious enough to make this drama passable entertainment.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 4, 2007