Dissatisfied with his meaningless job and depressed over his wife filing for divorce, a Canadian man decides to become a marathon runner with hopes of Olympic glory in this early career Michael Douglas drama. The begins well with Douglas having to overcome resistance from everyone around him, including his two daughters who find him embarrassing because he insists on running everywhere - including beside them as they cycle to school. The strained relationship between Douglas and Susan Anspach (as his wife) is curious too as he begins courting her (and she accepts his advances) once the divorce goes through. It is as if the they just needed the excitement of copulation outside of marriage to rejuvenate things. The second half of the film is unfortunately nowhere near as engaging though as Douglas finally qualifies for Olympic try-outs. It never rings true how all his naysayers suddenly begin cheering him on, and the film becomes sentimental to boot near the end, not helped one iota by a maudlin music score. In all fairness, the film's director, Steven Hillard Stern, does well visualising all of the running scenes with mobile camera-work and some atmospheric nighttime runs. Stern was never an especially remarkable director though with films like 'The Devil and Mex Devlin' and 'I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now' to his credit, and it is hard not to wonder what another director may have done with the material. Certainly there is a lot of interest in how Douglas wishes to live his dream beyond all social norms and expectations and Douglas is at least solid in the lead role.

I saw this IN THE THEATRE when I was 15 and a recreational runner. I found it awful. Ony 2 movies that I ever saw were worse (theater viewings only). The other two movies that were worse were The Other Side of the Mountain and some snowmobiler movie where the guy crashed after flying off a mountain and spent the entire movie crawling through the snow on his stomach. Among films where the main character does not fall off a snowy mountain while traveling fast, this rates as my absolute least favorite.SPOILER:At 15, I was already tired of the whole "Take this job and shove it!" type of films and Running was one of them. Michael Douglas, quits his job, wraps his tie around his head and goes out for a long run.Then he works his way up to the Olympic team.He falls during the Olympic marathon after stepping in a pot hole (yeah, there'd be one of those on the course!) and hobbles to the finish in darkness.END SPOILERI like fantasy. I like sports. I even run myself. I like rooting for real underdogs.This film just gave me the dry heaves.If you want to see a good film that revolves around running, check out Without Limits.Steve Prefontaine was both real and mystical. Most of all, he was nuts!

I loved this film, having seen it in 2006 for the first time 27 years after its first release! It really showed Michael Douglas' early potential to become the Oscar winning star he became in the 80's, everything was there - nice guy, caring, all the mannerisms, facial expressions and voice intonations that he later did so well, but I think this was the absolute best of his early roles. OK so he was the messed up guy that he portrayed so often, but in this film he had an ambition that took over his life, almost to the exclusion of everything else. I really felt for his kids - embarrassed by him at first, but then so thrilled for him. And the finale - well, he could have won the gold medal, but that would have been unreal and wrong in the context of the film, instead we saw him battling it out to the very end - and I had tears running down my face when he finally entered the stadium. I rate this one of the best Douglas movies!

I loved this movie, I saw it when I was kid. My Dad took me to it when he was training for marathons. I have been searching for it for years. Now that I have found it. it is impossible to obtain a copy since it has been discontinued. Looking for assistance!!!