Review of The Runner

The Run­ner: David Horton’s 2700 Mile Run of the Pacific Crest Trail (2006)

Direc­tor: J.B. Benna

Writer: Blue Kran­ing

Rat­ing: NR

Genre: Doc­u­men­tary | Sport

Tagline: David Horton’s 2,700 Mile run of the Pacific Crest Trail!

Plot: Fol­lows extreme ultra­run­ner David Hor­ton through the desert sun, the high snow­bound moun­tain passes, the pain, the emo­tion, and his rev­e­la­tion. Join him as he runs more than 40 miles per day for 66 con­sec­u­tive days in an attempt to set the speed record on the 2,700 mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mex­ico to Canada. Fol­lows Horton’s jour­ney and dis­cov­ers who he really is through inter­views with today’s best endurance ath­letes, Horton’s fam­ily, and Hor­ton him­self. What dri­ves him to such extreme chal­lenges? What does it take to become THE RUNNER? Writ­ten by Jour­ney­film (IMDB)

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An ‘Inter­est­ing’ Man

I have to admit that David rubbed me the wrong way at first. Some­thing about his mil­i­tary hair­cut, near con­stant com­ments about his God-given gift to run, say­ing it was all in the Lord’s hands, and his smirk made me think of him as yet another chau­vin­is­tic, author­i­tar­ian, I’m-the-man-and-am-in-charge-God-says-so kind of guy. I’ve run into more than my fair share of these types over the years. I found him an odd char­ac­ter in other ways, too.

Take how excited he gets on cam­era explain­ing the best part of inter­sec­tions to run through in order to find loose change (he actu­ally runs through an inter­sec­tion on cam­era and picks up a penny!). His attempt to jus­tify this behav­ior fell short, in my mind, as in a year he only found a few dol­lars worth.

What helped me finally relate to David was how he explained his down­fall was he was a very sen­si­tive guy. He cried at one point when he was home­sick for his fam­ily – who made appear­ances through­out the movie in inter­views from home – and shared how he loves chic flics. I do too and felt I under­stood him bet­ter for this.

Inspir­ing Kids to Run

Fur­ther into the film I saw another side of David I liked and could under­stand. While he was indeed dri­ven – obsessed might be a more appro­pri­ate word – to set a record for the time it took to run the Pacific Crest Trail, it was obvi­ous that the foun­da­tion for his drive was a pure enjoy­ment of run­ning. This came across through his fre­quent smiles and laugh­ter while run­ning and talk­ing about run­ning. It was also nice to see how his love of run­ning was infec­tious. Some of his stu­dents at the col­lege he teaches at related to the cam­era how they got into run­ning because they went out with David. Footage of the stu­dents run­ning cross-country with him, smil­ing and laugh­ing, was evi­dence that he con­tin­ues to inspire many to get out there and run. Any­one who does that is doing good in my book.

Push­ing the ‘Drama’

Most of the movie doc­u­ments David’s jour­ney through Cal­i­for­nia, espe­cially the Sierra Nevada Moun­tains in Cal­i­for­nia. A recent record snow­fall made the trek more dif­fi­cult. All effort to dra­ma­tize his cross­ing of snow fields and fast-moving rivers, though, was a lit­tle too much. I think I was under­sold on the dan­ger these threats posed because it was men­tioned so fre­quently in the build-up to cer­tain por­tions of the trip. It was all too obvi­ous that the direc­tor knew every good epic story needs a near-death event for the hero to over­come. While cross­ing alpine streams is dan­ger­ous and lives have been lost attempt­ing it, there was too much plan­ning done for me to buy that David and his guide were ever in real dan­ger. It was a cal­cu­lated risk at most.

What a Trip

Added drama or not, David Horton’s 66 day run of the 2700 mile long Pacific Crest Trail from the Mex­ico bor­der to Canada was an incred­i­ble feat. It takes a lot of deter­mi­na­tion, grit, and will power to get your­self through all of the lit­eral and metaphor­i­cal ups and downs over more than 2 months run­ning through desert and moun­tains. While the movie attempts to and often suc­cess­fully cap­tures the men­tal stress such a trip causes, there’s cer­tainly no way to get a real feel for how much this takes until you actu­ally do it.

I would have liked to see more footage of the whole trip – Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton were mostly skipped – but I under­stand that this would make the movie entirely too long and less inter­est­ing. I enjoyed see­ing behind the scenes and learn­ing more about the the plan­ning and aid nec­es­sary to pull off such an enor­mous run. David cer­tainly could not have done 9t with­out all the help of his sup­port staff, car­ry­ing in food and guid­ing him through snow-covered passes.

While David was a real char­ac­ter, full of energy, the movie lacked any equally inter­est­ing char­ac­ter to sup­port him. In fact, most of the other folks in the movie were very low-key and even sleepy in com­par­i­son. That’s just the luck of the draw, as the first goal had to be to get a sup­port staff together who could help David com­plete the trip, not make for a more inter­est­ing movie.

Bot­tom line is The Run­ner pro­vides a good win­dow into the extreme nature of an endurance run of such mag­ni­tude with some beau­ti­ful footage of alpine set­tings. David is an inter­est­ing guy that shares enough of him­self that most peo­ple will prob­a­bly find some way to relate to him. If you’re into trail run­ning, the movie’s worth a view­ing. Just don’t expect the same level of footage or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment that come with larger-budget movies such as Run­ning the Sahara.

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