The 10 Best Films About Running. In this series of sports-themed articles, we’ll be reviewing the best sports films from auto racing and baseball to tennis and surfing. These Best Of lists will include both popular and lesser-known films from a specific sports film subgenre and our plan is to release each list monthly near a major sporting event.
Like our previous article on The 10 Best Films About Tennis, there aren’t many sports films focused solely on the sport of running. Most of these films feature the demanding challenges with running and involve the Olympics which we also covered in a previous article about the Summer Olympics.
However, there are a few films we wanted to highlight that focus on everything from a local community’s 5K race to the internationally renowned Boston Marathon. These are films that highlight the discovery of running and how it parallels coming-of-age themes to the simple joy of running and people who push themselves to the brink – both physically and mentally.
Once we’ve completed the list of best films by individual sport, we’ll have a cumulative article with the absolute 50 best sports films. For now, you can view our tentative schedule below and we’ll try to fit in some articles for some other sports such as Volleyball and Rowing that aren’t typically depicted in many films:
- Best Films About Football
- Best Films About Baseball
- Best Films About Surfing
- Best Films About Basketball
- Best Films About Summer Olympic Sports
- Best Films About Soccer
- Best Films About Running
- Best Films About Tennis
- Best Films About Auto Racing
- Best Films About Hockey
- Best Films About Wrestling
- Best Films About Boxing, MMA & Competitive Martial Arts
- Best Films About Winter Olympic Sports
- The 50 Best Sports Films
For our rankings we’re going to use some criteria to help define and refine our list. First, the film must primarily be about running. There are other subthemes of running including films about Ironman competitions or Adventure Racing that aren’t an exact fit for our list. 100 Meters (2016) and Breaking the Limits (2017) are examples of Ironman films and Arthur the King (2024) is about Adventure Racing (but is also a Family Film about Animals) so though we recommend checking out all these films, they won’t be listed here (with the exception of 100 Meters which has one of the best sequences of running in the entire subgenre).
Second, the more the film is about running or the psychology (and joy) behind running, the higher it will rank on our list. Many of the films listed here were also covered in our recent article of The 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics. However, those films were ranked according to how much they pertained to an Olympic event, while this list will focus on running itself and other running-based competitions that aren’t Olympic related. An example here is Race (2016) which was our top selection for best Summer Olympics film, but will be ranked lower here as that specific film covered many of the other track and field Olympic events Jesse Owens participated in.
Third, we’re also not going to include films about the Paralympics or Special Olympics that feature running events but will highlight some of the better films focused on these competitions in a future article.
Fourth, we’re only including films about running and not documentaries. There are some great documentaries about running including Unbreakable: The Western States 100 (2011), I Am Bolt (2016) and others that you can find more information on at Run to the Finish’s website.
And fifth, we had to follow our rule for all of KBZ’s film listings where we only list films that have a 4.0/10 or higher rating and were released after 1970.
Our complete list of Sports Dramas features over 587+ films from 1942 – 2024 and our complete list of Sports Comedies features over 254+ films from 1968 – 2024. Though we don’t yet break down films by sports discipline, we will list every individual sport-related film in their respective articles. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to get updated as we release future articles on each sport and add the latest and greatest subgenre films to our collection.
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The 10 Best Films About Running
Films that didn’t make our list (and only for completists): Off the Mark (1987), On Wings of Eagles (2016), 1 Mile To You (2017) and Strider (2020).
Honorable Mentions: The World’s Greatest Athlete (1973), The River That Carries Us Along (1981), Running Brave (1983), On the Edge (1986), Finish Line (1989), Across the Tracks (1991), Prefontaine (1997), Endurance (1999), Run, Fat Boy, Run (2007), Sara Prefers to Run (2013), 4 Minute Mile (2014), 1:54 (2016) and Crush (2022).
#10
Road to Boston
Plot: Escaping Japanese oppression, Korean athletes embark on an unforgettable journey to race under the Korean flag in the 1947 Boston International Marathon, the first international marathon since World War II.
KBZ’s Take: Part post-World War II political drama and part sports drama, the Road to Boston makes our list for a rather simple story about runners competing for the pride of their country.
The film doesn’t reinvent the wheel within the subgenre and follows a template defined by sports dramas before it, but that doesn’t make the film any less emotional or exciting during its recreation of the 1947 Boston Marathon.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#9
Running
Plot: An Olympic hopeful marathon runner hopes his success will be the answer to his marriage woes and other personal problems.
KBZ’s Take: One of the lesser-known films starring Michael Douglas, Running is about the will and determination of an individual running a marathon. Though the film takes a while to get going, Douglas gives one of his most underrated performances as the past-his-prime athlete who gives up everything for one last shot at glory.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#8
Fair Play
Plot: In the 1980s, Anna, a Czech sprinter, starts training for the Olympics. After she collapses during training, she learns she is being given steroids and decides to stop using them, until her mother helps the coaches give them to her.
KBZ’s Take: Fair Play is one of those obscure and under the radar films that made its way into our Top 10 after viewing. While other films have focused on the use of banned substances in sports, this Czech film looks at the use of performance enhancing drugs in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
The film does have some well-choreographed race segments involving Anna (Judit Bárdos) but the film’s more focused on how an athlete is expected to perform within an oppressive regime.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#7
100 Meters
Plot: Based on true events, a Spanish man with multiple sclerosis attempts to finish an Iron-Man competition despite being told that he could not make 100 meters.
KBZ’s Take: We mentioned earlier in this article that we were making one exception for our rules to feature a film involving the Ironman competition. 100 Meters is that film and it’s one of the few films we highly recommend for fans of inspirational sport dramas.
The film is ultimately about one man’s desire to fight his disease and prove that the mind can overcome any physical obstacles. The last act of this film is one that will have you going through a rollercoaster of emotions once Ramón (Dani Rovira) attempts to do the unthinkable.
Where to Stream / Buy: Netflix
Plot: A track coach in a small California town transforms a team of athletes into championship contenders.
KBZ’s Take: Kevin Costner is the godfather of sports dramas from his roles in bicycle racing in American Flyers (1985) to baseball in Field of Dreams (1989) to golf in Tin Cup (1996) to football in Draft Day (2014). Overshadowed by all of his other sports films is the underrated McFarland, USA.
Detractors of the film will say it’s formulaic but that’s “par for the course” in this subgenre. Where the film excels is with its message of inclusion and bringing hope to a community not expecting it. It also has some of the better choreography of the subgenre that helps make a film about running, exciting.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#5
Race
Plot: Based on the true story of Jesse Owens and his eventual participation in the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany.
KBZ’s Take: Race was our #1 selection in our 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics article and while it’s a great film about running, it’s also a great biopic about one of the greatest athletes in U.S. history – Jesse Owens.
The only reason we have it ranked lower here is that the film is primarily focused on the Olympics and other track and field events involving Owens.
Additional Lists: The 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics #1, Top Sport Drama Films You Haven’t Seen #4
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#4
Saint Ralph
Plot: The story of Ralph Walker, a ninth grader who outran everyone’s expectations except his own in his bold quest to win the 1954 Boston Marathon.
KBZ’s Take: We mentioned earlier that sports drama films involving teenagers and running often intersect with coming-of-age themes. Saint Ralph is a perfect example of this merging of sports and puberty.
Though the film often toes the line with raunchy comedy, at its core, it’s a film about family and participating in sports in belief of a miracle.
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: The film follows the life of famous 1970s runner Steve Prefontaine from his youth days in Oregon to the University of Oregon where he worked with the legendary coach Bill Bowerman, later to Olympics in Munich and his early death at 24 in a car crash.
KBZ’s Take: The story of Steve Prefontaine had two filmed version of his life released within a year of each other – Prefontaine (1997) and Without Limits in 1998. Both films follow Prefontaine from his college days and his eventual death. And each film features great acting performances of Prefontaine by Jared Leto in Prefontaine and Billy Crudup in Without Limits.
We would advise watching both films, as though they are similar, they touch on different areas of Prefontaine’s life. But we will say that Without Limits is the much better film in our opinion with some exciting footage of Prefontaine (Crudup) running and a more interesting representation of coach Bill Bowerman played by Donald Sutherland.
Additional Lists: The 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics #4
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God’s glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
KBZ’s Take: There’s little doubt that Chariots of Fire is one of the best films about running. It’s a film with 7 Academy Award nominations at the 54th Academy Awards and secured wins for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design and Best Original Score for a song that has endured (and been parodied) in countless films since.
Though the film is ultimately about the spirits of the Olympics (with underlying themes of politics and religion), it’s also about the competition between two runners, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) who develop mutual respect for each other.
Additional Lists: The 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics #2
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
Plot: A prison inmate is recruited for the Olympic trials after showing near world record breaking time.
KBZ’s Take: The Jericho Mile is one of our personal favorite films at KBZ making it our top selection in Top Sports Drama Films You Haven’t Seen and #4 in our 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics articles.
Why we hold the film in such high regard is simple – it’s about the simple joy in running. Even though Murphy (Peter Strauss) is a convicted felon, he runs in the prison yard every day just to run. And though the Olympics sublot drives the majority of the story, the film always comes back to Murphy’s love of running and the role it plays in his life (and the decisions that led to his imprisonment).
It also has some of the best choregraphed scenes of running. This TV Movie from 1979 was directed by Michael Mann and it shows. His innovative direction during the ‘race’ scenes makes watching someone run circles around a track exciting.
It’s one of KBZ’s highest recommended sports films to see (along with its unique instrumental version of Sympathy to the Devil).
Additional Lists: Top Sports Drama Films You Haven’t Seen #1, The 20 Best Films About the Summer Olympics #5
Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
