10 Most Underrated Sports Movies of All Time, Ranked

It’s one thing to round up the usual suspects when it comes to sports movies, since some of the greatest do rank among the best and most enduring films of all time. Take the Best Picture-winning ones, for example, like Rocky and Million Dollar Baby. Then there are also hugely nostalgic and hard-to-dislike ones, including The Karate Kid, Field of Dreams, and White Men Can’t Jump.

But plenty stand as more underrated, yet still equally worthy of being checked out, and the following titles are a testament to that. Some of these are older releases that aren’t as well remembered as some of the more definitive classic sports movies, while some are more recent, yet weren’t necessarily as popular as they should’ve been on a global scale (like, a few of the following movies were popular in their country of origin, but not to the same extent in English-speaking countries, even though they have international appeal).

10

‘Grand Prix’ (1966)

A person driving a racing car on a track in Grand Prix.
Image via Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

There is admittedly a massive runtime you have to be okay with before watching Grand Prix, since it’s kind of an epic about racing, and runs for about three hours. There are various characters from different teams competing in the ongoing 1966 Formula One championship series, with Grand Prix bouncing between melodrama and racing action over the course of its epic length.

And the racing stuff is the best here, with the slower scenes maybe being a little underwhelming, though there is an incredible cast here that helps a bit when it comes to the more patiently paced scenes in the film. Grand Prix has been lost to time, to some extent, and feels like a product of its own time in some other ways, but it’s still got quite a bit to offer for viewers who also count themselves as fans of Formula One racing.

9

‘Downhill Racer’ (1969)

Speaking of great casts, the best reason to watch Downhill Racer is the fact that it stars both Robert Redford and Gene Hackman, each of them fairly well-established by 1969, even if both found the 1970s to be even more fruitful. Hackman plays the coach of Redford’s character, who’s a somewhat rebellious young skier taking part in the Winter Olympics.

The drama that ensues between the two leads here is solid, and the sequences capturing the sport of downhill skiing are pretty intense, and it’s also neat to have a sport not often seen in cinema covered here in such detail. That could, admittedly, also make Downhill Racer slightly niche, but it’s well-made and also very well-acted (not too surprising, because, again, Hackman and Redford are the stars here).

8

‘Escape to Victory’ (1981)

Sylvester Stallone in military dog tags talks to a man with a watchtower behind them in Escape to Victory.
Image via Paramount Pictures

Escape to Victory boldly argues that yes, you can have a sports movie and a prisoner of war film rolled into one, even if the resulting film is a tad messy. But that’s just interesting to have in the first place, and the cast here is even more intriguing, seeing as Escape to Victory stars Rocky himself (Sylvester Stallone) alongside Michael Caine, Max von Sydow, and Pelé (yes, really).

So many worlds are colliding here with a cast like that, and yeah, the mix of genres is also pretty eclectic. POWs form a team and play against their Nazi captors during World War II, and as the title suggests, it also dips into the whole prison escape sub-genre as well. Parts work and other parts are a bit scattershot, but Escape to Victory is star-studded enough – and enough of an oddity – to be worth a watch.

7

‘Shaolin Soccer’ (2001)

Mighty Steel (Chow) kicking the ball in Shaolin Soccer.
Image via Universe Entertainment Ltd.

Another sports movie that’s kind of combined with an unlikely genre, here being martial arts movies, Shaolin Soccer has a ton of action, over-the-top physical comedy, and – as you’d expect – soccer. And sure, martial arts movies can be sports movies, particularly if they focus on a martial arts tournament (see Enter the Dragon), but a soccer movie that’s also a martial arts flick is something else entirely.

Shaolin Soccer embraces sports movie clichés and then also pushes them ridiculously far…

It stars Stephen Chow, who also directed the film, and he’s best known for Kung Fu Hustle, with Shaolin Soccer being almost just as good, and pretty similar tonally, too. Shaolin Soccer embraces sports movie clichés and then also pushes them ridiculously far, working as something of a parody but also having some sincerity and care to the whole thing, making it endearing as well as funny and exciting.

6

‘Le Mans’ (1971)

Steve McQueen preparing to take part in a race in Le Mans (1971).
Image via National General Pictures

As 2025’s F1 demonstrated, there’s still an appetite for movies about high-stakes car races that involve people going at dangerously fast speeds, and Grand Prix‘s not the only film that shows how that sort of movie was popular 50 to 60 years ago. There’s also Le Mans, which is about the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, which does indeed take place near Le Mans and lasts an entire day.

It stars Steve McQueen, and was actually filmed during the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, so it certainly scores points when it comes to feeling authentic and sometimes startlingly realistic, even. Like with Grand Prix, some of the non-racing scenes are quite as striking, but McQueen’s charisma goes a fair way and, to be fair, most of the movie is indeed focused on racing.

5

‘Tokyo Fist’ (1995)

A boxer wearing a helmet with blood trickling out of his nose in Tokyo Fist (1995).
Image via Kaijyu Theater

Shinya Tsukamoto is very much a cult filmmaker, best known for the incredibly confronting (but compelling) Tetsuo: The Iron Man. But he’s done more than just body horror, since one of Tsukamoto’s other films is Tokyo Fist, which is a melodrama with a ton of in-your-face violence that also functions as a hyperactive sports film, in the same way Tetsuo: The Iron Man is an absolutely relentless horror/sci-fi film.

The plot here involves two men becoming rivals after one seems to start an affair with the other’s fiancée. The man taking part in this cheating is a boxer, and the other isn’t, so he starts training to become one so he can exact some sort of violent vengeance against his prior friend. Tokyo Fist is wild and, admittedly, one can see why it’s more of a cult movie, but it’s also fascinating and unique, and that makes it worth watching for fans of boxing movies who think they might’ve otherwise seen it all.

4

‘The Color of Money’ (1986)

Tom Cruise as Vincent Lauria and Paul Newman as Fast Eddie sitting together in The Color of Money.
Image via Touchstone Pictures

While The Hustler is well recognized as one of the best sports movies ever, The Color of Money, which came out a quarter of a century later, isn’t quite as well-liked. But it is a Martin Scorsese movie, and it stars a young Tom Cruise alongside an Oscar-winning Paul Newman, and so it’s not one of these underrated movies that also counts as an obscure film, by any means.

But it doesn’t get quite as much love as it probably deserves, so it still qualifies as underrated. It’s buried under all the other iconic Scorsese films out there, sure, but it’s a great deal better than you’d expect a sequel to The Hustler to be, with Newman and Cruise making for a great pairing; the former doing something of a victory lap fairly as he approaches the last couple of decades of his acting career, while the latter used this movie – alongside some others from the 1980s – to prove his growing star power.

3

‘The Calamari Wrestler’ (2004)

A man fighting a giant squid inside a wrestling ring in The Calamari Wrestler (2004).
Image via Klock Worx Co.

If a movie title like The Calamari Wrestler doesn’t immediately sell you on watching the movie, that’s okay. The Calamari Wrestler might not be for everyone. But if your curiosity gets the better of you, and you do indeed find yourself unable to resist watching a movie about a wrestling squid, then you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised by how funny this one is.

It sounds like a one-joke movie, and maybe it is, but it gets a lot of mileage out of making a fairly barebones story about a professional wrestler who transforms into a giant squid, having to deal with expected problems inside and outside the ring while looking the way he does. It’s ridiculous, but also oddly touching at points, while further feeling like a fever dream at other times, and all that makes The Calamari Wrestler easily rank among the most underrated (and obscure) sports movies of all time.

2

‘Redline’ (2009)

Redline is an anime film that is more or less about car racing, but it’s also a sci-fi movie, and so the racing here definitely isn’t of the more realistic variety found in the likes of Grand Prix and Le Mans. Redline plays out mostly in space, and involves a galaxy-wide race that involves technologically advanced vehicles and the most elite racers from various planets all taking part.

But racing is a huge part of the movie, and certain conventions of the sports genre are followed here, so Redline does ultimately still count as a unique kind of sports movie. It also satisfies immensely as an action movie, being one of the best action and/or sports films of its decade and having some really out-there visuals that have to be witnessed to be believed.

1

‘Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India’ (2001)

A group of men preparing to play cricket in Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001).
Image via SET Pictures

The best way to summarize Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India is by saying that it’s pretty much Seven Samurai, except it’s set in India instead of Japan, and it’s about cricket instead of defending a village from bandits. The main characters here are villagers who have been impacted by harsh taxes imposed by the British, but they find an opportunity to get out of being taxed so relentlessly if they take on a team of British cricketers and best them.

But losing the wager will lead to more taxes, and few of the main characters have any experience with cricket. So Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India ends up being an underdog story and one of the best found in any sports movie. All the while, it’s also an impressive epic, a moving drama, and even something of a musical. It’s got everything, and it’s kind of perfect. It was big in India, but wasn’t as well-known or widely loved outside India as it should be. And the long runtime shouldn’t be a turn-off here, since Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India more than earns its length, and finds tons to do to fill the 233 minutes of movie here.

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