One Square Mile

As a sports film (of which there are many each year, mostly in the B-genre, most you will never hear about) this little gem has more in common with Eastwood's Gran Torino. In other words -- oh this sounds so cliché, but sometimes only a cliché will suffice -- this really isn't a film about winning, or a film about running, but a film about life. Life. The one sport we all have in common. The one sport we compete in each day, whether we want to or not. The 4-minute mile becomes a metaphor for merely living your life with integrity, with impeccability. With its sights set so high, this would be such an easy film to mess up. The balance is so delicate. Heavy-handed direction would make the viewer feel manipulated, or "Disneyed." And too light a touch would miss the mark completely. Canadian director Charles-Olivier Michaud, with very few credits in features, simply nails it. I mean nails it. Pitch perfect direction. About as far from Michael Bay and the Transformers as the Earth is from the Moon. And the cast is uniformly excellent, especially veteran warhorse Richard Jenkins -- who steals his scenes so subtly you don't realize it until the film is over -- and Analeigh Tipton, who has to simultaneously be provocative enough to attract a boy who wasn't looking for a relationship in the first place, yet practical enough to cement that relationship as the seismic tremors in the script come one after another. A gem. A perfect gem.