More notable as clumsy propaganda than a revelatory look at China's Olympic lore, the based-on-fact dramatisation of sprinter Liu Changchun's participation in the 1932 Los Angeles games is a cinematic stumble. From the stodgy opening credits, the film is weighed down by a political heavy-handedness that renders the production as forceful as a malfunctioning starter's pistol.

Liu's journey to become China's first Olympian is exciting and inspirational - elements all but buried under the formulations of writer Wang Xingdong's scenario and further eroded by Hou Yong's pedestrian direction. A famed cinematographer for his work with Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Hou displays little affinity for narrative or thespian nuance in relating Liu's trek from relative obscurity as a Manchurian university track champion to participating in the world's most famous sporting event.

It is a story ideally suited for the screen, embracing triumph and failure on battlefields large and small. While still a student, Liu (Li Zhaolin, above, an actor in need of better direction) finds his life disrupted when Japan invades China's northeast and establishes the puppet nation of Manchukuo. Opposed to representing the collaborationist state at the Olympics, Liu puts his life in danger by escaping to Peiping (now Beijing). There, he is given the cold shoulder by the weak-willed government but eventually finds financial support from warlord Zhang Xueliang (Hu Jun).

Accompanied by coach Song Junfu (Shi Liang), the two cross the Pacific and barely make it to the opening ceremony in time. It's all potentially exciting stuff, the precarious Sino-Japanese situation of 1931-1932 intruding into the supposedly neutral competition. Then, as now, the Olympics were never entirely about sport, and then, as now, there were those who decried the linking of the two while exploiting these factors to the utmost.

And so it is with The One Man Olympics. The script wants to have it both ways, denouncing the US media for its political inferences while committing the same 'crime' in scene after scene. The failure isn't so much that the formula of propaganda plus sports cannot be effective cinema, but that The One Man Olympics lacks the skill to be effective as propaganda or cinema.

The snarling Japanese and US bit players also deliver cringe-inducing performances that are a throwback to an earlier era of mainland filmmaking. The movie's abrupt ending neglects to elaborate on Liu's Olympic fate, presumably because of his failure to qualify for the finals, let alone win medals, and therefore does not fit in with the current Games' official cheeriness.

The One Man Olympics opens on Aug 14