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Following the success of Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe adapted another of his works for the screen, this time a short story of a disillusioned teenager rebelling against the system. Newcomer Tom Courtenay is compelling as the sullen, defiant Colin, refusing to follow his dying father into a factory job, railing against the capitalist bosses and preferring to make a living from petty thieving. Arrested for burglary and sent to borstal, Colin discovers a talent for cross-country running, earning him special treatment from the governor (Michael Redgrave), and the chance to redeem himself from anti-social tearaway to sports day hero. With Colin a favourite to win against a local public school, tensions build as the day approaches. Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is one of the great British films of the 1960s.
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