Sprinter Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Sprinter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 17, 2020

Cool Runnings famously made hay out of the unexpected delight of Jamaica having a bobsled team that competed in the Olympics. "Runnings" of a sort perhaps more attuned to the often sunny environment of the Caribbean island nation, namely track and field, are at the center of the formulaic but well done Sprinter. Akeem Sharp (Dale Elliott) is a runner with some considerable talent, and he is mentored by a concerned coach (David Alan Grier), though hobbled by some family dysfunctions which include mother Donna (Lorraine Toussaint) who has been consigned to working in the United States away from the family in order to help make ends meet.

Sprinter rather deftly charts a predictable course for Akeem, as he's lionized as a star, falls prey to some jealousy of his elder brother (who "coulda been a contender", so to speak), while also trying to come to terms with a long absent mother and a father whose own sorrows are sometimes drowned in alcohol. It's all pretty tried (trite?) and true by this point, but the film is buoyed by some heartfelt performances and its Jamaican setting, which provides a lot of local color and pulsating, rhythmic soundtrack.

Sprinter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sprinter is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FilmRise and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. FilmRise has been making the transition to "real" pressed BDs, and Sprinter is one of their best looking presentations to date. What I'm assuming is digitally captured imagery (again assumedly finished at a 2K DI) is brimming with detail and a really beautifully suffused palette. Yellows and blues are especially vivid throughout this presentation. A glut of close-ups really delivers impressive detail levels on everything from Akeem's (supposedly) famous dreads to the fabrics on outfits. A couple of scenes, notably two nighttime sequences, have some kind of oddly variant contrast, but on the whole this is a very nice, sharp and well detailed looking presentation with no noticeable compression anomalies.

Sprinter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

FilmRise also steps up to the plate (or starting marks, as it were) with four audio options on this disc, including DTS-HD Master Audio tracks in 5.1 and 2.0. The surround track is nicely immersive courtesy of the many outdoor scenes, where both ambient environmental sounds and crowd noises populate the surround channels, but perhaps most especially courtesy of the really propulsive music that is utilized throughout. Most of the actors here speak with a kind of Jamaican patois that some may find occasionally a bit hard to understand, but there are optional English subtitles available for those struggling in such a manner.

Sprinter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Sprinter Premiere at The Grove (1080p; 1:33)


• Photo Gallery (1080i) is authored without a timecode, but does advance automatically, so have the pause buttons on your remote handy if you want to linger on any given image.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:37)

Sprinter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You've probably most likely seen Sprinter before in one form or another, but this film has its heart in the right place, and the Jamaican setting gives it a really distinctive look and feel. Technical merits are solid, and Sprinter comes Recommended.