Running Brave

This is the true story of soft-spoken Billy Mills, a Sioux who left the reservation on an athlete's scholarship to the University of Kansas. There he encounters a dictatorial coach, a selection of racist bigots, the WASP girl he eventually marries. The real story is Mills' internal struggles - grasping the 'killer' notion of winning, dealing with the attitude of whites, and with the contempt of the Sioux who think he's become white. The examination of Mills' motivation is sketchy, though Benson endows him with a thoroughgoing niceness (runs well, too), and the climax of Mills' athletic career - and of the film - concerns one of the great long distance finals (the 1964 Olympic 10,000 metres), ending in a final lap of unsurpassed drama. Sadly, the staged race does not recapture the excitement of the original.