Hard Miles: An Easy Movie to Like

Is there anything more liberating in childhood than riding a bike fast and away from the eyes of adults? The based-on-a-true-story Hard Miles, a cross-between Stand and Deliver and Breaking Away, now appears on digital platforms following a limited theatrical...

The post <i>Hard Miles</i>: An Easy Movie to Like appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Is there anything more liberating in childhood than riding a bike fast and away from the eyes of adults?

The based-on-a-true-story Hard Miles, a cross-between Stand and Deliver and Breaking Away, now appears on digital platforms following a limited theatrical release earlier this spring.

Therein, Matthew Modine stars as Greg Townsend, a social worker who led thousands of troubled youths on bicycle journeys through the American West as a means of showing them a larger and more beautiful world beyond the small and often cruel one known to them.

The film focuses on Greg’s relationship with four teenagers incarcerated at a youth detention center. In metal shop, he asks them if they know upon what they labor. “I’ve always wanted a big metal triangle,” one jokes. Another offers the correction, “It’s a trapeze-a-zoid.”

They discover they work on bicycle frames.

“You make something yourself, you take pride in it,” Greg informs his charges. “You take care of it.”

For what purpose do they make bicycles?

Greg convinces the center, and the teens, on the wisdom of embarking on a 752-mile cycling expedition to the Grand Canyon. “Let’s show the state who these kids really are,” Greg exclaims in rationalizing the bicycle adventure. “They’re not their rap sheets.”

Fellow social worker Haddie, played by Cynthia McWilliams, offers an analogy to the taskmaster Townsend to help him better understand their charges. Fleas, she notes, can jump extraordinarily high. But when put into a jar, the lid stops them from jumping to the best of their abilities. Once let out of that jar, they continue to operate as though a lid keeps them down.

The youngsters resist. The bicycle uniforms make them look like dweebs. Accepting the offered anti-chafing bicycle butter would seem to say something more damaging about them. Quitting periodically feels like the better option than persevering.

“You want to get in the van,” Greg Townsend counsels. “Go ahead. It’s right there. You can limp across the road right now, and none of this will have mattered. Or you can set a goal. You can set a goal today and know that nobody told you what you could or couldn’t be, that nobody told you what you can or can’t do. You decide that.”

The film peels back layers on the characters, particularly Modine’s Greg, who clearly cares because he clearly looks at a reflection of himself from the past when he looks at the boys. Unknown young men (Jahking Guillory, Jackson Kelly, Damien Diaz, and Zach Robbins) who can act — and crucially look like teenage passersby and not actors — helps the audience buy into the story.

Hard Miles features entirely too much male crying and hugging and feelings that all seem, particularly from the uber-masculine world of male juvenile delinquents, only somewhat more realistic than the main characters of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. The scenery on the road to the Grand Canyon makes up for any shortcomings. So, too, does the self-contained, uplifting story.

We rarely see grace, forgiveness, and redemption on 2024 silver screens. We all experience it to some degree outside of theaters. The juxtaposition of these two realities separates Hard Miles from the pack.

The post <i>Hard Miles</i>: An Easy Movie to Like appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.