Where the film really works is as a sports movie. The concept is brilliantly worked, and the strategic and scientific approach of the coach sets it apart from most other sports movies, which tend to rely on ultimately less impressive "charismatic" leaders to bring the best out of their athlete. Not that Allee Sutton Hethcoat isn't charismatic, it's just that her character Coach Donnelly doesn't rely on it to make up for a lack of a coherent coaching approach.
Where The Perfect Race falls down is that it doesn't know its strength and instead tries first and foremost to be a Christian movie, which once again means crowbarring in biblical analogies to risible effect. And for what? Pandering to an insular echo chamber of Christian viewers only denies it the wider viewing that it deserves.
Where The Perfect Race falls down is that it doesn't know its strength and instead tries first and foremost to be a Christian movie, which once again means crowbarring in biblical analogies to risible effect. And for what? Pandering to an insular echo chamber of Christian viewers only denies it the wider viewing that it deserves.