Four Minutes Reviews

Veteran writer Frank Deford chronicles a singular 20th-century sporting achievement — the conquest of the four-minute mile — without contemporary attitudinizing in this ESPN original film. In post-war Europe of the 1950s, people were hungry for heroes. Conventional wisdom had it that only two challenges remained for modern man: Conquering Mt. Everest and running a four-minute mile. Although pragmatic Roger Bannister (Jamie McLachlan) always remembered his father’s admiration for track and Field event, he went to Oxford's Exeter College to study medicine. When required to participate in a sports, Bannister shifted from rowing to racing. Ordered to set the pace for senior students, Bannister wound up winning his first meet in 1947. Starting with that victory onward, England’s Amateur Athletics’ Association wanted to groom Bannister for the Helsinki Olympics three years hence. Although he refused to jeopardize his future as a doctor, Bannister plunged into Olympic training on his own terms. Refusing to work with a coach, Bannister tested his stamina on a treadmill of his own devising. Such independence irked sportswriters, who branded him an uncooperative loner. Unfortunately, Bannister’s carefully researched master plan collapses when judges change the order of his qualifying heats. Taunted by the Press, Bannister does not come home an Olympic hero. But former champion Archie Mason (Christopher Plummer), whose career was cut short by WWI, sees Bannister’s potential, and Bannister flourishes under Mayo’s tutelage, shaving seconds off his best time by studying wind conditions and even modifying the size of his cleats. With international rivals nipping at his heels, Bannister finally enters the record books in 1954 with a time of three minutes, 59 seconds. Director Charles Beeson and his creative team use admirable restraint while doing justice to the sights and sounds of the period. In the vein of (if not in the same rousing league as) CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1982), this inspirational saga suggests that athletic stars are more than the sum of their accomplishments, and that adhering to their values is part of their heroism.