The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young

It's amazing that it was filmed when we first have 3 finishers in the history of the race, and I can't resist the feeling that Jared and Brett are real characters like the ones we see in a Marvel production. Great job, and Lazarus is a real legend!

The Barkley Marathons is about a race based on a prison escape that only ten people have finished in the last twenty-five years. This is a documentary where the mere concept of it excites you and believe me, it delivers. It's crazy how something as weird and obscure as this has been going on for so long and people just began to hear about it. It has some nice looking shots which some documentaries don't have at all. It's informational and entertaining at the same time which is a plus. My only flaw with it was how hard it was to remember who was who while watching. With fifty different racers it's hard to keep track and I feel like a better job could've been done.

8/10 -- Great. Please give this film a watch. It hurts me to see movies like this get no attention whatsoever. You can buy it on Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, and iTunes for like five dollars digitally and on their website, you can but it for twenty-five bucks on Blu-Ray. I wouldn't recommend torrenting it because a film like this needs all the attention it can get.

I enjoyed this documentary, which follows the 2012 race of Barkley Marathon, one of the toughest and wildest ultramarathons.

This movie reminded me of "Safety to Nome" about Iditarod Trail, another tough ultra marathon occurring in Alaska, in that the participants' persistence and strength were equally impressive. But this one took a lighter and less tense stance, featuring each key attendee's journey in a less dramatic (more abstract?) way, blended well with the narrative by the organizer. It was much easier to follow it, rather than keeping my palm sweated all throughout.

Nevertheless, it was not boring at all! The last few minutes were indeed full of a good drama and a small suspense.

I recommend it!

This is a documentary about pushing your limits and never giving up. It follows the lives of untraditional people (at least in the world of sports) for 3 days and really gets you to care about their journey. You root for these people to accomplish this crazy marathon, not because of the marathon in itself, but because of the accomplishment it represents for them!

I am not a sporting man. I am also not a fan of sports films, generally. I don't run. However, I am a connoisseur of stories about obsessions, particularly unhealthy ones that could be detrimental to people's mental and physical well-being. And that makes this movie RIGHT down my alley.

The true story of a determinedly obscure marathon, one that has select entrants, an absurd level of endurance, and a strange way of keeping track of people's progress, it is clearly designed with the intent of only attracting the oddest of of endurance participants. It's both the total inverse and somehow the spiritual twin of the documentary Hands On a Hard Body, as both of them plumb the depths of seemingly normal people's endurance to understand their drives and motivations.

Does it answer that? Maybe, maybe not. But the journey is worth it regardless.