Without Limits

A Phoenix pick

The sport of running, track coach Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland) tells his University of Oregon track team in Robert Towne's Without Limits, is absurd, and thus a good preparation for life. Few embraced both absurdities with such arrogant fervor as did Bowerman's most famous protégé, Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup).

Towne's film is not the first big-screen treatment of the runner's life (last year's Prefontaine was a pedestrian effort), and neither does it penetrate much beyond the television image of the athlete at the 1972 Olympics with which it opens. Little is learned about his background (there's a glimpse of his disapproving mother, no explanation for the absent father, and a flashback to Steve as a child being chased, Forrest Gump-style, by local bullies), and that may be for the best. For Towne does capture what Prefontaine declared to be the "art" of his obsession in all its pain, labor, triumph, and futility -- it's the best portrayal of the athletic ethos since Towne's own Personal Best. Conflict here is not so much dramatic as philosophical, with Prefontaine's "front-runnerism" -- the belief that a race is won or lost only by total effort from start to finish -- clashing with Bowerman's canny stratagems and mathematical calculation. The conflict is unresolved, though the fact that Prefontaine died in a car crash at 26 and Bowerman would go on to develop the first Nike running shoes could be used as an argument either way. Prefontaine belongs to a realm where myths are more than just logos on footwear, and Towne's film gives him proper homage. Screens at the Cheri Sunday, September 13 at 7 p.m. and at the Copley Place Monday, September 14 at 12:30, 3:30, and 5:30 p.m. Director Robert Towne will appear to introduce Sunday's showing and receive the Boston Film Excellence Award.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| With Friends like These | Digging to China | Monument Ave. | Rounders | Lolita | God Said, 'Ha!' | My Son the Fanatic | The Mighty | Shattered Image | Gods and Monsters | Xui Xui: The Sent-Down Girl | Without Limits | Clubland | The Inheritors | The Celebration | Urban Ghost Story | The Boys | Living Out Loud | Stuart Bliss | The General | The Kindness of Strangers | Dancing at Lughnasa | Central Station | The Human Race | Double You Street | Oberwasser -- By U-boat to America | The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confession of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot |

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