Mark Veigl

Suffice it to say: even though you know how the (true!) story ends, the final scenes will get your heart pumping faster. Like almost all adaptations of a book, a vast amount of material was cut (I wish it had included more of the Sequim back-story, for instance), and, like the book, very little attention was paid to the other guys in the boat beside Joe Rantz. And the timeline was massively compressed: I have no experience with rowing beyond having dorm-mates who rowed for UC Irvine decades ago, or having watched the Windermere Race on "the Cut", but even I know that, no, you don't start out as a novice and wind up at an Olympiad 6 months later. (IRL it actually took 3+ years). But to fix all these the movie would have to be 10 hours long. This non-rower* found it exciting, even inspiring. *I'm old and have some ortho limitations, but I may yet try my hand (oar?) at this yet. On my bucket list since long before the movie.