Name: Retro Film Review: Prefontaine (1997)
Item: Prefontaine
Rating: 70
Author: @drax

(source:tmdb.org)

Because of the tribal instincts within world's audiences, team sports are always going to be the most popular sports. Hollywood, keenly aware of its audience's plebeian tastes, shied away from dealing with more aristocratic sports like track running, swimming or tennis. It takes very special kind of individual and very special kind of story to break such prejudice. In 1997 truck runner Steve Prefontaine proved to be such individual. His life story provided plot for two films. First of them was Prefontaine, directed in 1997 by Steve James, film maker best known for his documentary Hoop Dreams.

The protagonist of the film is Steve Prefontaine (played by Jared Leto), young man who grows up in 1960s Oregon traumatised both by his parents' modest wealth and his own inadequacy in popular sports. The only area where Prefontaine seems to excel is track and field. Convinced of his talent, he goes to Oregon University in order to train under the watchful eye of Bill Bowerman (played by R. Lee Ermey), legendary coach and future founder of Nike. His relentless pursuit of athletic excellence allows him to break few national records and becomes serious candidate for gold medal at 1972 Munich Olympics. The path towards that goal is beset with all kinds of obstacles - team mates who don't like his arrogance, girlfriend who dumps him over infidelity, sport officials who strangle him with red tape - but Prefontaine's worst enemy may be his own character.

Prefontaine strays from the norms of Hollywood sports film not only in the choice of sport. The usual cliche of lovable underdog who defies odds is replaced with true and, therefore, more realistic story and more convincing character. Prefontaine, well-played by Jared Leto who actually resembles real-life athlete (which audience can notice in stock footage seamlessly edited into his scenes), is more complicated, flawed and human character. Prefontaine is shown as talented athlete and man willing to sacrifice almost everything in order to win; but he is also arrogant and doesn't handle failures very well. The film also shows Prefontaine to be far from saint – he cheats on his girlfriend and the film hints on substance abuse problems. Real life events, which are the basis for this film, have conspired to make life for protagonist more difficulties than average Hollywood script could ever do.

Another thing in which Prefontaine strays from Hollywood standards is in its style. James has good experience in shooting documentaries and he uses that experience in order to frame the story with faux documentary interviews. In those interviews actors who had portrayed Prefontaine's friends and acquaintances are made-up to look quarter of century older. Those scenes are very convincing. James has problems when the film strays into more conventional narrative, especially when the film deals with events following climactic Munich Olympics. Subplot dealing with Prefontaine's crusade against hypocritical sports officials is not handled very well and the ending is somewhat disappointing and too melodramatic. On the other hand, this is more the fault of real life than Steve James. The acting in the film is very good, with R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket fame being very convincing coach while Amy Locane handles thankless role of Prefontaine's girlfriend very well. Steve James also shows a talent in recreating 1970s America with minimal budget. Although not as impressive as it could have been, Prefontaine is one of the better sports films to come from Hollywood in recent years.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on February 19th 2004)