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100Using documentary-style Super 16 film and staged cutaway interviews with friends and family, James and his photographer and co-producer, Peter Gilbert, fashioned a movie with an affecting, candid look.
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75What sets Prefontaine aside from most sports movies is that it's not about winning the big race. It's about the life of a runner.
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75But then, just when it appears the race is lost, Steve James' love for his character and art form kicks in and wins the day, and, though flawed, Prefontaine is an engrossing portrait of a complex figure.
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75His complex personality comes through in this surprisingly affecting minor pleasure, though perhaps one shouldn't be surprised when two of Hoop Dreams' key makers reunite for another smart sports pic. [24Jan1997 Pg.03.D]
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70This is filmmaking in a higher-IQ Disney style, frequently verging on terminal sappiness, all heart-quickening-guitar-music, coming-around-the-last-turn, legs-pumping-toward-glory stuff.
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But at best, the movie has an air of immediacy, freeing it from the ossified myth-making that plagues many true-life biopics.
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This successful characterization is definitely a team effort among actor Jared Leto (the brooding Jordan Catalano of television's "My So-Called Life"), writers James and Eugene Corr, cinematographer Peter Gilbert, and musical director Mason Daring.
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63For the most part, the documentary segments, in addition to being unilluminating, are intrusive.
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60As the driven competitor who learns to make hubris work for him, Jared Leto gives a complex performance that suggests a deep, intriguing interior to the character even as he maintains a convincing one-dimensional facade.
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58But in this standard athlete-dies-young presentation, we never do catch the magic that made Steve Prefontaine a towering figure. Instead, this Pre is a shaggy-haired, sentimental favorite -- a teen angel rather than an Olympian.
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50Steve Prefontaine must have been something special -- everyone says so -- but there's no magic on the screen.
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50Though it is always pleasant and agreeable, this film has the bland and undemanding texture that characterizes movies made for network TV.
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50This first dramatic feature by "Hoop Dreams" director Steve James has one foot still squarely planted in the docu aesthetic and notably lacks any psychological interest or emotional depth.
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40But even after the documentary affectation gives way to a more conventional narrative, the film has trouble ringing true.
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25The acting ranges from adequate (Jared Leto, R. Lee Ermey) to awful (Lindsay Crouse and everyone else).