Portrait of a runner 'Without Limits' 
by Robert W. Butler 
 
A drama, opens today and is rated PG-13 for language and sexuality. Running time is 1 hour 57 minutes.  

Showing at the Fine Arts theaters. 

Film documents the short, fast life of distance runner Steve Prefontaine  

On the eve of an important international track meet, distance runner Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup) seriously injures his foot while engaging in athletic sex in his hotel room. The next morning he tells his coach he's competing anyway. 

"You don't know what it will do to your foot if you try to run," warns coach Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland). 

"You don't know what it will do to my foot if I do run," Prefontaine answers, "but you do know what it'll do to me if I don't." 

"Without Limits" is an examination of the brief life and career of Prefontaine, a driven athlete who in the early '70s dominated American distance running but fell just short of the Olympic medal his fans were sure he would someday win. 

In many ways this latest film from writer/director Robert Towne (best-known as the screenwriter of "Chinatown") is a dialogue between wisdom and impetuousness, reason and instinct. 

"I tried to change him," Sutherland's Bowerman recalls in narration. "He tried not to be changed." 

Crudup's performance gives us a Prefontaine fueled by the pure adrenaline joy of competition. He wanted to win, yes, but only on  his own terms. He disdains racing strategy as unworthy of a track warrior. "Pre" knows only one way to run -- from the heart. No race plan. No hanging back with the pack. Simply take the lead and never look back. 

The wonder of Crudup's performance is that his Prefontaine emerges not as an arrogant jerk but as a purist who simply cannot compromise principles he feels with almost religious intensity. 

This attitude appalls Bowerman, the track coach at the University of Oregon. Gradually, though, the older man relents. Other runners can be molded. Prefontaine is what he is. 

Still, Bowerman does have one lasting bit of wisdom to impart: "If you can find meaning in the absurd pastime of running, you may be able to find meaning in another absurd pastime: life." 

Towne apparently has a thing for track sports -- his first outing as a director was "Personal Best," a lesbian drama set in the world of track and field. For a guy who has spent most of his life crafting dialogue, Towne makes "Without Limits" a deeply visceral experience. His staging of the races avoids most of the genre's cliches; they've been superbly shot and edited to suggest the suspension of time experienced by the participants, where the slightest hitch in one's stride can be the difference between triumph 
 and heartbreak. 

Crudup (last seen in "Inventing the Abbotts") is particularly effective at capturing Prefontaine's charisma -- on campus the guy had the following of a rock star. He could have just about any girl he wanted, and yet he apparently was devoted only to a coed (Monica Potter) who made it clear that her Catholicism required her to remain a virgin until marriage. 

Sutherland, who can veer from subtlety to maddening ham in the same performance, here does a terrific job of mining Bowerman's paternal instincts, strong will and creativity (puttering around with his wife's waffle iron, he began making rubbers soles to put on his athlete's shoes; his effort later turned into the omnivorous Nike Corp.). 

Because he died young and tragically in a 1975 car accident, Steve Prefontaine will always be something of an enigma. But "Without Limits" does a surprisingly satisfying job of bringing him to life.