Film Review – Hard Miles (2023)

It’s a long and winding road to self-discovery and redemption for the four teenagers in R J Daniel Hanna’s Hard Miles. And, cinematically, it’s a well-worn one, but the film’s low-key style, combined with a big heart, results in an unexpectedly rewarding piece of storytelling.

Based loosely on the life and work of youth instructor Greg Townsend, it starts with failure. Townsend (Matthew Modine) attempts to convince a judge that a student at the correctional facility where he works should be allow to stay, despite having assaulted another teenager, but his please fall on deaf ears. It’s a tough place to work and, outside the academy’s walls, Townsend is a keen road cyclist. His job and his sport come together when he decides to take four of his students on a 762 cycle ride to the Grand Canyon, a trip he’d originally planned to do on his own.

The territory is familiar and the format solid and conventional in a film that comes packaged with a strong moral framework and a message to match. But none of that gets in the way of telling a story which, while softening its rougher edges, still manages to be inspirational and stay on the right side of sentimental. We’re told at the end how Townsend – who is still cycling – led thousands of students on cycling trips, with many of them subsequently taking up a variety of professions. One of them even became a professional cyclist. In the film, he’s tireless, patient and demanding, pushing the boys to discover more about themselves, their abilities, their depths and their strengths.

Visually, the landscapes are a gift to cinematographer Mack Fisher but, while the climax of the ride is clearly the highlight, there are plenty of impressive cycling sequences which are very much at home on the big screen. The film comes into its own, however, when it examines the backstories of not just the four teenagers but their coach himself. Violence, drugs and gang culture have blighted the young lives, although the most memorable of the four is the rake-thin Smink (Jackson Kelly, recently seen in The Greatest Hits) who tries to exert some control over his life by strictly limiting his food in-take. Townsend himself spends the first half of the story trying to ignore a past where, not unlike the young people he works with, he “grew up on fear”. And, like his students, he eventually finds some longed-for peace.

Modine carries the film on his shoulders with authority and is well supported not just by the quartet of younger actors, but also Cynthia Kaye McWilliams as a less idealistic teacher and Leslie David Baker, who adds a piquant humour to the role of the academy’s principal. Hard Miles takes us down a well-trodden path, one to redemption with the help of sport and an inspirational coach and, thankfully, we still have enough heart to respond to its visual beauty and the determination of people like Greg Townsend, who simply never give up.

★★★

In UK cinemas from 31 May / Matthew Modine, Sean Astin, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, Leslie David Baker / Dir: R J Daniel Hanna / Munro Film / 12A

Watch our video Interview with Matthew Modine.