DVD REVIEW: FOUR MINUTES

The Pitch

“Let’s make a flick about that guy who did that thing back in that one decade.” “You mean Roger Bannister, who was the first man to run a mile in under four minutes back in 1954?” “Yeah, him.”

A bunch of British dudes and Christopher Plummer.

The Nutshell

Back in 1954, the only three frontiers left for man were to climb Mt. Everest, break the four-minute mile and bag Marilyn Monroe (okay, maybe I threw in that last one). Sir Edmund Hillary knocked off the first one, Joltin’ Joe had the last one covered, so the only thing left was for someone to run his ass off. That someone was Roger Bannister, a 25-year-old British med student at Oxford. Without using a coach at first, training on his own terms and in his spare time, and failing to capture gold in the 1500 meters (the Olympic mile equivalent), Bannister was set to give up and concentrate on medicine. That was until, he found the right coaches, the right methods and the right reasons to achieve the feat. This is the story of how he went about doing it.

This is a surprisingly loaded disc, with deleted scenes, outtakes, a good 25-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, detailed interviews with Roger Bannister and his running mate, Chris Chataway, the original uncut footage of Bannister’s historic run, an audio commentary and even an enhanced trivia track. I’ve seen full season box sets of TV shows that weren’t this stacked. I would never have expected this much material to be on one of those ESPN Original flicks, but this one has hours of stuff. The cover art is a little like Chariots of Fire…actually it’s a lot like Chariots of Fire, but thankfully without the Vangelis.

This is definitely one of the better movies that’s come down the pike for this reviewer in a while. Relative unknown Brit Jamie MacLachlan portrays Bannister, a shy but dedicated and talented med student at Oxford. Bannister is interested in the mile run, which for some reason isn’t highly thought of in 1950s England. Still, Bannister is set on running that one and only race. He loses his first in a college competition because he pulls a Prefontaine and tries to run from the front, only to fade in the clutch. Preferring to run on his own and without a coach, and only running in his spare time while he concentrates on his studies, Bannister is beset by the press, who demand that he conform to established training methods and to run for England in international competitions. As his ability grows and his times drop, he’s also constantly pursued and ushered on by Archie Mason (Christopher Plummer), a former world class runner who was paralyzed in World War I, and also by Burnett (Friday the 13th: The Series’ Chris Wiggins), a coach. When he fails to win gold in the 1952 Olympics, Bannister is set on retiring, but he meets his future wife, Moyra and trains with Burnett and Mason and (spoiler) succeeds in breaking the barrier.