Winners Take All

Debi Richter does her usual excellent work exploring the repression of women in today's society, as her character tries to find her true place in the world, no matter where the journey takes her (and us)--especially considering what little screen time she was given. But twenty minutes of Debi equals forty minutes of a lesser actress, if you know what I mean. If only she'd won that Oscar. The envy of the Hollywood in-crowd is pathetic. There are only three times that I rose and saluted today: when my dad raised the flag this morning, when mom fried both hamburgers AND brats for lunch, and when Deborah Richter first came on-screen in Winners Take All. She is what America is all about!

Debi earns a full ten stars for her totally insightful & engaging performance but I've got to admit that the rest of the flick was fairly mediocre (which explains my five-star rating). "Don't be to judge mental" indeed. Was that Charles Haid in one of the stadium crowd scenes?

MGM has been sitting on a number of movies that have been screaming for a DVD release, so I am confused why they would pass on those movies and choose this obscurity for a DVD release. Maybe there is a bigger audience for motocross racing than I thought. But since I am not a fan of this sport, you can probably guess what my feelings are about this movie. In fairness, the movie is fairly slickly made, with decent production values including good photography and some breathtaking shots of motorcycles zipping around and flying in the air. However, the story sinks the movie. Despite the movie running over 100 minutes, it is clear that the movie originally ran longer but was cut down in the editing room, with some plot points being vague and/or cut short. But even if the movie ran at its first cut length, we'd still have a story that is painfully predictable and with stock characters. In the end, I think the only people the movie would appeal to would be those really into the sport of motocross racing, though even they will probably find the movie extremely familiar for the most part.

I personally loved this movie. I was born in the 80s and pride myself on my knowledge of 80s movies and how great that era of fashion, music, movies, etc. Wise. But I had never heard of this movie until recently, and I decided to give it a watch, and I'm glad I did. In the 80s and 90s we had some really good "extreme sports" movies, ride, Thrashin, BMX, bandits, days of thunder, airborne, brink, and winners take all. To me, this movie is up near the top behind, possibly only Days of Thunder. This is your typical 80s, romcom. It's got all the makings of plots and movies you have already seen, so it can be a little bit predictable but it's classic 80s and it's me 80s movies have a charm that no other era of movies has had. I like the characters, I like the script, it's just a really fun movie, easy to watch, easy to sort of figure out and navigate yeah very simple and fun. Do yourself a favor if you love 80s movies and watch winners takeoff. I think it's a real hidden 80s gym but not a lot of people talk about or know about .

The only winners here are the stunt drivers. Everyone else, including us (the movie watchers) are all losers.

It was Meh.

Definitely an 80s movie, has all your typical traits as well. This isn't a very good 80s movie though.

The film wasn't even really about the character Billy Robinson, it was more about his friend.

The story is real simple, we have two friends at odds because one of them stole his groupie girlfriend and the other friend tries to pay him back by beating him at a big motocross race. Insert your occasional obstacle, insert your potential love interest, bunch of motocross action, and end movie. This film felt like it was shot on an extremely anemic budget. Felt so cheap for some reason. It never dragged and moves along nicely, so that's a positive.

This film is all about the motocross scenes. The stunt drivers were really good and it was cool to watch.

This is the type of film you watch when you're sick at home, you're up early and need to kill some time.

It's watchable, just not very good. That being said, I would recommend watching it, but just for the stunts.

This gets a LennyReviewz Score: 4/10.

In 1998 and 1999 I earned a national number for 125 motocross and super cross. I still ride now but winners take all takes me back to the very beginning of my motocross journey. It was the first racing movie I ever saw, and as a ten year old kid it was the greatest movie in the world. I would beg my mom every week to go back to the video store and rent the movie again. Finally she got sick of renting it and bought me a copy. As a 30+ rider now I see a lot of corny things in the movie but It is not to bad compared to the junk we have today like super cross the movie and motocross ed etc... So for 1987 it was ahead of its time especially since motorcycle racing was nowhere near as popular and mainstream as it is today. I always wondered what kind of bikes were under those funky team hurricane plastics and if any of the bikes survived in anyones collection or if all that stuff was just scrapped after the movie was made.