What sort of surprised me, as the race got under way in the movie, was how much I was involved. History already has recorded that he won. The movie's climax, of course, is Billy's big race at the 1964 Olympics. His relationship with Billy Mills is more interesting than most coach-athlete relationships because Hingle actually seems to be coaching. We get the feeling, through his character, that he does know something about track and something about human nature. He reminded me of coaches I have known, right down to the gut hanging over the wash pants, the narrow tie with the monogrammed clip, and the free advice. The most interesting character in the movie is the coach, played by Pat Hingle.
Mills is played in the movie by Robby Benson, a sound but sort of unexciting young actor who seems to specialize in these sincere roles. I'm prepared to believe that most of the things in this film happened more or less as we see them happening, especially because "Running Brave" works on a fairly restrained key. Billy Mills was and is a real man, and he won a gold medal in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. But it also is, of course, the stuff of somebody's life. Her parents don't approve and neither do his Indian relatives.
He falls in love with a white girl and there's more trouble. When the young man, Billy Mills, enrolls in school, people call him "Chief," snub him and won't let him join their fraternities. The time is the late 1950s, and racial prejudice against Indians runs high in Kansas, we're told.
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