An eloquent, excellently controlled movie, that seems aware of and comfortable with the range of sports movie cliches, and doesn't really try to transcend them, but rather works within them with a closer focus both on the heart of the performer and on the motivation of the coach who pushes him: the intuition of one and the methodicality of the other synthesize into a framework within which Pre's great courage and stamina might have achieved greatness - without that synthesis, his enormous passion might merely have caused him to misdiagnose himself and throw everything away (like after his loss at Munich when he takes a job in a bar and drifts). The movie seems less distinctive when it tackles the secondary strands of girlfriend and his activism (against the politics of the Athletics Association), but the evocation of the events themselves is great and Pre's charisma is well captured. Towne works in a familiar smooth contemporary style, although Crudup is so naturalistic and wired up that he almost breaks loose. And Sutherland invests his usual wintery distance with real depth of feeling - there's a genuine excitement in the dialogue between the two, a mutual testing of the limits.
Review of Without Limits
