What a gorgeous place! Who would have thought that Mississippi looks like that? Although I will assume it was supposed to be some place like Missouri. Only one person has an accent, and it clearly appears more Midwestern.
The scenes of a yellow school bus entering a track area were interesting and unique. Even the slow motion images of the kid running were well done.
But like the other reviewers mentioned, we've seen this basic scenario so many times. Teen loses friends and withdraws. No one understands him, and it's him against the world, like some angst- ridden character in Beverly Hills 90201.
Why put actor Tim Roth in there for five minutes? That was so bizarre. He doesn't hide his accent either. Billy Crudup has interesting mannerisms, but he gets the weirdest roles. I didn't really get this one, but I guess he was just a quirky guy who sees the humor in life. I found his character appealing to watch.
Peter Coyote and the Lynskey woman were terribly miscast. By the way, in any rural community, there will be church and spiritual advisers to a kid like this. The kid himself would have some kind of church background to fall back on. But we don't even get an obligatory sermon after the accident.
I suppose I understand why the rich girl liked him. She was a journalist and part time runner, so she wanted to get inside his head. But he didn't seem very interested in her. So why would she be so obsessed with him? He wasn't charming, and even his angst was pretty cliché.
I guess they felt compelled to throw in the sore loser jock from another school, and the black jock friend. Yet we learn very little about him. In our protagonist's former life he had a best friend and a girl. Why not let him nurture a best friend relationship again, while getting to know the new girl?
Basically I don't get the main plot. What was it that people wanted from this kid? He won his races and did well in his courses. What was the big conflict? I felt like they were trying to fake some kind of core conflict that didn't even exist. OK. He needed better sneakers and to take the occasional recovery day off from running. That's about it.
Nevertheless, the depiction of puppy love, the location photography, the school bus imagery, and the likable coach made it watchable.
