It's 2 hours and 14 minutes, but feels like 5 hours. Barely plotted, ridiculously slow-moving. Richard Harris plays a sullen rugby player, and is sullen over and over and over and over for 2 hours and 14 minutes. This is mone of the most boring films I've ever seen.

Why does the North of England always have to be portrayed as a gritty, bleak and soul-less place? Answer: To provide the perfect backdrop for brutes like down on his luck miner, Frank Machin (Richard Harris) who just goes around making other people's lives a misery. Sure, he may be talented at rugby league as he later joins the town's club. But Machin, is a bad mouthed, volatile social misfit, a psychopath. Buying a big Jaguar and a new suit just makes him worse. Frank wants but can't have but he doesn't know what it is he wants. He even resorts to raping his own landlady who hates him. But much as I wanted to, I couldn't stop watching this terribly realistic film-noir. Surely, Harris's best ever film performance.

I watched this movie because the song "Ancient History" by The Cribs was written based on it and this film was definitely worth it. This movie is a very drab slice of life film that makes the best out of its concept and narrative. This movie did drag just a little but the end was well worth it. "Everyone wants what they can't have" seems to represent Frank's relationship with Margaret, as he is a famous and rich rugby star that has seemingly everything he could want. Instead of basking in his money and the women readily available he instead spends his effort to try and be with Margaret, a widow just getting over her husband's death. Sometimes you may be watching a scene and not understand how it's contributing to the plot, but just stick with it. The scenes are supposed to build up Frank's life and the payoff in the end is well worth it.

Very good, if quite dated. A grim look at at time long since passed, though human misery and shallowness of life is timeless.

Known for his absurdist social satires, notably O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital, director Lindsay Anderson made his debut with something quite the opposite – a hard-hitting, gritty slice of life called This Sporting Life. Richard Harris stars as Frank Machin, a former coal miner who, after being discovered during a bar fight, finds fame and fortune in the rough and tumble world of rugby. However, this is not a sports movie. It deals primarily with Frank's difficulty functioning with the norms dictated by society and his inability to develop a meaningful relationship with is widowed landlady. It is a beautifully made film, highlighted by the intense, animalistic performance from Harris.

A drama about human ugliness!

Propped up by a focus on a magnetically intense main character, This Sporting Life is certainly a cut above your average kitchen sink drama of the period that chooses to simply lament the conditions of the time and gives out a sense of general hopelessness expecting that alone to be sufficient to be considered avant garde. This film feels like an early draft script for what would eventually become Raging Bull decades later - an athlete who rides a determination based on anger to professional success, only to see his personal relationships fail, simultaneously commenting on the commercial and cruel nature of their profession, less heroes of people than sideshow acts. While engrossing and at times powerful, the narrative does seem one-note at times and occasionally too prolonged for its own good. Harris and Roberts each form an integral part of a toxic and clearly ill-fated relationship, each capable of cruelty and certainly far from flawless, whose distressing realism certainly cause the film to be elevated above other "angry young man" films of the era. (4/5)

The actors make the most of the script for a classic.

A really taut British precursor to Raging Bull but played out over the backdrop of rugby league in Wakefield as opposed to a US boxing ring. Very well acted with a creepy nervous chill in the air. Ages fairly well as the screenplay is decent.

Good acting. The writing and direction actually seem ahead of their time. Sad movie.

It's brilliant, but fantastically depressing. Don't watch it while you are upset, emotionally vulnerable or drunk. Richard Harris is super.

A technically beautiful and haunting film of working class strife. That is just... a half hour too long. Richard Harris is giving it his all and crushing it. Even if it makes me hate him because i hate his character. Gotta love that bleak ass ending though. Also -- being a women sucked in the 60s and that spider stole the show.

Harris is magnificent and Rachel Roberts matches him when she is on the screen - but Harris is in every scene and we never tire of watching/studying him. Yes, he has the Brando attraction. He shows his full range here, even singing (with arms crossed across his chest the whole way!). And his shouting out for Margaret is a direct reminder of Brando's crying out for Stella in Streetcar. Half a star off for to me the lack of motivation for Machin's misogyny (maybe we are just meant to take it as part of some sportsmen's makeup) and the sometimes confusing time- jumps. But thank God we have Harris's performance to always watch. I wonder who won the Academy Award that year. Trivia: look for Edward Fox as bartender in non-speaking part 10 years before Day of the Jackal. Also, delightful bit of comedy between Minchin and Arthur Lowe (the future Mr Mainwaring of 온라인카지노추천s Dads Army) about false teeth!

my review: http://wp.me/p1eXom-231

Tragic and sad. In a way it made me glad that I was not a professional sportsman. It also shows the struggles in England to make ends meet, socially and economically.

Custa a crer que um jogador de rugby seja o sujeito perfeito para um drama tão avassalador quanto "This Sporting Life", mas não nos devemos esquecer de que não existe talvez um país que tenha uma relação tão visceral com o desporto como o Reino Unido. Lindsay Anderson reconhece o peso disso mesmo e - com base num livro de David Storey aqui adaptado por ele mesmo - estabelece o paralelo perfeito entre a vontade de vencer dentro de campo e a necessidade de equilibrar isso com uma vida emocional satisfatória. Richard Harris, no papel principal e com a intensidade de um Marlon Brando, depressa convence-nos de que ninguém mais representaria tão bem quanto ele essa fome de ser apreciado pelos outros. Richard Harris é um tremendo actor com o temperamento de um boi, da mesma maneira que "This Sporting Life" é um drama para guardar ao lado dos sagrados.

Richard Harris overstayed his welcome in my house - this would have been 4 stars if it lost 30 minutes or so, I reckon. But perhaps director Lindsay Anderson meant for Harris's performance to feel like an intrusion? After all, his modus operandi in the film is to push for what he wants, getting in everyone's face, whether he's wanted or not (and he manages to make himself unwanted). Of course, there's probably no blaming Frank Machin (the character's name) for wanting to use rugby to pull himself up out of the bleak British squalor (typical of producer Karel Reisz's own films) that he starts out in. But he's too blunt and overwrought to make a go of it, souring his chances and probably his life. Anderson would move on to other angry young men (notably in ...if).

The brutality of Harris brings to mind Brando in Streetcar. He is all brute force and aggression who uses rugby sometimes unsuccessfully as the conduit through which negative emotions go, It is when another outlet is needed that the film becomes stark.

Um dos grandes representantes da New Wave Britânica, o filme conta com uma direção corajosa de Anderson e um trabalho simplesmente impecável de Harris. Clássico obrigatório!

Its first half is so much better than the second.