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Sorry, this movie sucks

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Let me start by stating the obvious. Yes this is a television movie (but one of the small percentage that are actually of a decent quality), and yes this is a sports movie. So with that established one would know the territory they are in very early, and what to expect along the way. However he we get all of the above but delivered with a nice reined quality by all concerned. The script and direction are good and so are the performances. The film is bases around the events leading up to Roger Bannister becoming the first man to run a sun four minute mile, and to this extent you are invested in the movie and genuinely wish him to succeed. I know an artistic liberty where taken with certain characters, but that really is for athletics historians to quibble about. Jamie Maclachan is very good as the reserved Englishmen Roger Bannister who is continuously struggling to find the right balance between his medical studies at Oxford and his athletics. There is good support leading to the inevitable yet still enjoyable conclusion. Would I watch it again? Yes but not regularly and only if I find it on television.

I was very familiar with the 1988 version (The Four Minute Mile) before seeing this newer one. This film is less true to history, most seriously in replacing the real coach, Franz Stampfl, with the shadowy imitation one portrayed by Christopher Plummer. It also brings in Roger's future wife long before he really met her, in a crass attempt to add love interest. In addition, it somewhat misrepresents the weather problems on 6 May 1954 (see below). This newer version also omits any depiction of Landy and Santee's efforts and turns Roger's important and illustrious friends and helpers (Chris Chataway, Chris Brasher and Norris McWhirter -- see their entries in Wikipedia) into mere cyphers. These are serious omissions. On the other hand, this 2005 version has a much, much better Roger Bannister, which counts for a lot, given that he is the main character in the story. Jamie MacLachlan is believable as an athlete and does a great job in showing Bannister's combination of brilliance, modesty and stubbornness. He also convincingly embodies the post-war period in which the events take place (despite the garish American ties he is given to wear).This version also does moderately well at recreating the Iffley Road track in Oxford where the key event was run. The fact that the tower of Iffley Church in the background is clearly made of something akin to cardboard is not too detrimental. Anyone who has heard Norris McWhirter speak about that day -- the overseas channel BBC Prime has shown a clip of this hundreds of times -- knows that the main problem on 6 May 1954 was the wind -- and not so much the rain, as shown here. Roger decided to run when the flag on top of Iffley Church went limp, showing that the wind had dropped. Here, the film-makers have carefully provided the church and the flag, but the latter sadly continues to flutter merrily the whole time.There are other minor blunders, such as the wrong kind of telephones and the phrase "Get the hell out of here" ludicrously put into the mouth of a crusty old Oxford professor, but I can forgive these.It is well worth seeing -- but try to catch the other version, too.

Obviously, this is a sports movie so its going to be predictable. I really enjoyed this movie because the individual aspect of track and field makes it extremely hard to make an effective movie about it.Roger Bannister's breaking four minutes for the first time is probably the single greatest event in track history. It was a huge mental barrier which stood for nearly 20 years as something man couldn't break. Al though this movie didn't perhaps focus on that as much as it could, it still got that point across well. It was also very good at showing the world of sport back then - very white, gentile, amateur and elite, especially in Britain. And Roger Bannister was someone who personified all of it. That was shown well in Four Minutes, with him struggling to choose between medicine and running. The only real discrepancy I noticed was that they changed who was coaching him (it was in reality Franz Stampfl, an Austrian).Overall, this was a well-done movie which really covered all the bases in terms of the story of Roger Bannister. It showed who he was, what he was up against, and how he pulled it off.

This TV made for movie was obviously made to commemorate Roger Bannisters achievement in being the first athlete to run the mile in under 4 minutes. In fact it was made in in 2004 but I just saw it last week in the USA on of all things a sports cable channel.ESPN sports network is designed for the sports fan with attention deficit disorder with its quick fire sports updates of every baseball , hockey game, and college football match in about two minutes. When the pundits are not barking at each other or deliberately disagreeing with one another just for the sake of it, the shaky camera work and the high pitch wise cracking rhyming commentary leaves someone with an average IQ head spinning. It's all over the place which is part and parcel of the American jive on cable news and sports TV and which is the way American advertisers want it I suppose. I tell you it makes sky sports update on for half an hour look slow and pedestrian by contrast, unfortunately, it also sums up "Four Minutes" as a movie.As for the movie itself I really have to wonder why they bothered to make this film there was nothing interesting about it. Not only was it slow it seemed pointless when you knew what the outcome was.What made this movie worse was that Bannister was not a likable or an interesting character as far as this movie portrayed and after a while I couldn't care less if he ran under 4 minutes or not! However this is only part of the problem. It dawned on me why make a movie about an athlete that never achieved anything else meaningful in athletics before or after this? He retired from competitive athletics to pursue medicine and his record did not last long because very shortly it was broken by another runner. It would have been more interesting if he had smashed the record while running from the front or else had held it for a few years. It's not just by today standards he would still be on the back straight while the current crop of runners were running through the finishing line, it's that when you stack it up against Seb Coe's 800 meter run in 1981 or Michael Johnson smashing the world 200 meter record in 1996 and Bob Beamons jump in 1968 what he achieved was insignificant by comparison. Yes the four minute barrier being broken was a mile stone (excuse the pun) but when you line them up against the back drop of Olympic and world records Bannisters athletic achievements are minuscule by comparison. Coe's record lasted 16 years, Beamons 25 years and who knows when Johnsons is going to be beaten. In addition Coe, Beamons and Ed Moses best times/distance would still be very competitive today 25-35 years on. Today there are so many runners who can run under four minutes that you could pick any race i.e. a southern English counties one mile race sponsored by the AAA at Crystal palace, Bannister would canter in all spaghetti legged an exhausted last!The only positive thing I would say was that the period costumes of the 1950's did look good, the dull gray conditions of that day were realistic and the pace making of Chataway and Brasher was portrayed well. As I said at the beginning I wished this movie had been four minutes ---- the last four minutes only — other than that I'm afraid I can't recommend this too much!.