Prefontaine (1997)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Watched this many years ago and revisited as for some reason it stuck in my head. The acting is very good and the writing is .. not great .. but all holds together very well and a very un-taxing film for a date night in. It covers a lot of important people in sport , not just the main protagonist , which makes things even more interesting.It led us to watch the excellent documentary one day in September and Munich .. all relating to the same period and issues of the day....looking forward to the drama detailing how Nike started.Definitely recommended.

The only reason why I watched this movie was the actor Jared Leto and at the beginning it kind of looked like a slow, boring movie. I was so wrong and am now so happy to have seen it. Jared Leto did such a great job and the movie was done very well too. The story, the movie is great! Often this kind of movies about someone real can be a bit dry. Like it is just the telling of facts about a great person.But not in this movie. Prefontaine was giving facts, but also a story and a very moving, filled story. I don't only want to find out more about Fontaine, but like someone else in a review said, after watching the movie you just want to go outside and start running! I loved the very end of the movie.

Prefontaine provides a deeply inaccurate portrayal of the life and skill of American track star Steve Prefontaine. The film creates a girlfriend whom he never had, and shows him as uneasy and unconfident about his ability. It makes claims of him having a poor kick to finish races, and yet this is not as large of an issue in actuality, while the issue of his body type not being that of a runners is true. The film is poorly scripted as well, doing a terrible job of capturing Bill Bowerman's personality. Bowerman was certainly eccentric, yet the film shows him in more of a lunatic or crazy form. Especially with the introduction of him by the mailbox scene. Another film created based on Prefontaine's life, Without Limits, truly and best finds the truth. The script and production were overlooked by Kenny Moore (writer), whom was a close personal friend of Prefontaine, and Mary Marx, Prefontaine's girlfriend, in the film Without Limits. The misinformation provided in Prefontaine extremely frustrates me because the least a biographical film can do is stick to the facts.

I was a grad student at the University of Oregon in the early seventies when Steve Prefontaine made his mark as a runner there. This film captures his life and times reasonably well, and Jared Leto's performance does a good job portraying the Steve Prefontaine the general public like me knew, though Leto has more of a preppy/Abercrombie & Fitch appearance than the somewhat craggier Prefontaine. Those who knew him then personally can make a better, further assessment. Despite the limitations of its budget (for example, they shot the film in 16mm--Super16 actually), it's one of the better sports films made and should have had a stronger theatrical run. If memory serves, the release also had a woefully limited marketing budget.An athletic apparel store in Boston has a glass case which displays one of Steve Prefontaine's running singlets. It made me pause to see it there, an inanimate object which once clothed someone so highly animated. This film does a decent job of bringing life to that persona.