Reviews

"Compelling… more deeply revealing than the triumph-over-adversity saga one expects."
Dennis Harvey, Variety

 

"Like all good sports docs, the film goes from micro to macro on a dime, ultimately achieving an exhausted beauty."
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

 

"This film is a triumph… it is a testimony to the vast loneliness of the ocean and the mental fortitude it takes to cross it."
Bob Whitby, Orlando Weekly

 

"A great benchmark for the genre… It's impossible not to be swept away by these people who decide to race 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in rowboats… This is the one you shouldn't miss if it comes on TV or DVD. See now. No excuses." 
Gina Carbone, Portsmouth Herald (New Hampshire)

"Raw with emotions… nothing less than fascinating."
Adia Waldburger, Park City Record

 

"The ordeal is captured in all its gory glory… [a] terrific personal epic of endurance and wit."
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

 

"[An] engrossing, tautly edited documentary."
Joshua Katzman, Chicago Reader

 

"Similar in some ways to Touching the Void (2003), Row Hard is especially effective in illustrating how extreme physical conditions can lay bare a person's true self."
Cheryl Eddy, San Francisco Bay Guardian

 

“The film is a mix of all the classic narratives: man versus himself, man versus God, and man versus another man (in this case, his teammate). Friendships are destroyed, marriages are tested, and innumerable blisters are popped throughout the voyage, which is as psychologically challenging as it is physically brutal.“

Christian Schaeffer, The Pitch (Kansas City)

 

 

“Provides thought-provoking moments carried and remembered by the viewer long after the final frame has ended.”

Scott Neil, Royal Gazette (Bermuda)

 

 

"[It] gets at the heart of what it means to be human and why sports, or journeys, are an essential part of human existence."  

Sam Petri, Planet Jackson Hole

 

“A meditation on the outer limits of human endurance, the commitments we make to our friends and to ourselves, and what it means to be a winner… [It] is also imbued with a good deal of humor and beauty… a remarkable film.”

Michael Read, Release Print (San Francisco)

 

“The film’s measured pace works… Row Hard delivers more than a chronicle of a tortuous competition—it explores the protagonists’ near-fanatical quest for ‘success’, and the hunger of a son for his father’s recognition.”

Laura Lewis-Barr, Screen Magazine (Chicago)

 

 

"Unlike Ernest Hemingway's 'Old Man and the Sea' or Yann Martel's 'The Life of Pi,' this event really happened. But truth always has been stranger than fiction."

Brooks Robards, Martha's Vineyard Times

 

 

"A stunning documentary about one of the most taxing athletic events in the world."

The Insider (Spokane)

 

 

“Row Hard is, simply put, fascinating…Keep an eye out for this one…because it really deserves an audience."

John Serba, Grand Rapid Press