First off I love training movies due to the excitement of watching a dead end team Excell and beat all the odds. Michael Shannon is in fine firm despite a weak role. Alexander Ludwig plays the part of privileged kid to the hilt. The problem is despite two great lead's are uninteresting characters and storylines that totally off balance the movie. A rowing team fails on their last competition and a new coach (Shannon) is hired to turn the team around. What he sees isn't a winning formula but a bunch of guys working against each other. As the coach works to get them to work as a team he ruffles a few feathers in doing so.
If the writer's would have focused on the main topic instead of adding subplots that didn't add to the main story this movie could have been better. What we get is a 50% good movie followed by a 50% mess. None of the characters or in this case actors had chemistry which does show. None of the actors really had the talent to pull this story off and again it shows finally the writer's failed to feature the rowing actors evenly favoring 3 of the 9 which shows.
Now the first half moves along and doesn't feel like an hour passed, the second half drag's and adds more to the plot than needed. Even Alexander Ludwig starts to get on the nerves, I've seen him in "The Hunger Game's" and the new "Witch Mountain" and in this one it seemed as if it were too much for him to handle. The only good thing about this is Michael Shannon and his performance but he struggles himself to achieve on a weak role.
If the writer's would have focused on the main topic instead of adding subplots that didn't add to the main story this movie could have been better. What we get is a 50% good movie followed by a 50% mess. None of the characters or in this case actors had chemistry which does show. None of the actors really had the talent to pull this story off and again it shows finally the writer's failed to feature the rowing actors evenly favoring 3 of the 9 which shows.
Now the first half moves along and doesn't feel like an hour passed, the second half drag's and adds more to the plot than needed. Even Alexander Ludwig starts to get on the nerves, I've seen him in "The Hunger Game's" and the new "Witch Mountain" and in this one it seemed as if it were too much for him to handle. The only good thing about this is Michael Shannon and his performance but he struggles himself to achieve on a weak role.