Without Limts goes the Distance  
By Mike Clark 
 
Without Limits is the second engaging screen bio of runner Steve Prefontaine in 20 months and suggests how last year's more modest Prefontaine might have played with more filmmaking polish and a title impossible to remember. 

The virtues and dramatic ammo of both films are nearly identical, which isn't too surprising given that the University of Oregon star died at age 24 in an auto accident. 

The newer treatment rates a discernible, though not overwhelming, edge, with many of its best off-the-track moments devoted to the friendly but contentious relationship between "Pre" (Billy Crudup) and Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland), the Oregon coach who eventually helped turn the homemade running shoes he fashioned with a waffle iron into something called Nike. 

Bowerman argues against his star's "front-runner" disposition to run full-throttle every second, something Prefontaine didn't do in the 5,000-meter event at the '72 Munich Olympics. Director/co-writer Robert Towne opens his movie with — and later returns to — this watershed event, in which a sterling effort resulted in a medalless fourth-place finish and telecast humiliation. 

Working with veteran superstar photographer Conrad L. Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Towne turns the sequence into a nail-biter, even though the outcome is part of sports lore. The movie may boast persuasive central performances and evocative use of period music, but its heart is with on-field competition. 

A worthy companion to Towne's underrated 1982 portrait of female runners (Personal Best), Limits may face a similar challenge attracting mass moviegoers, which was certainly the case of the barely released Prefontaine.