Sundance, day five: heroic fools in boats

Just sidestepped over to Slamdance on Main Street to catch "Row Hard: No Excuses" only because the director and his dad stopped me on a shuttle bus and (with their publicist) asked me nicely. And because they're local guys: Luke Wolbach is based in San Francisco but was raised in Boston's South End, and his producer father Bill lives up in Essex.

Glad I went, because the movie's good. A documentary about a 3,000 mile trans-Atlantic rowing race, "Row Hard" focuses on the two men on the American team, who take 58 days to make the crossing in a wooden boat. And believe me, you don't want to see their hands when they come ashore after two months of rowing.

Like all good sports docs, it goes from micro to macro on a dime, and by the time the men and their rivals hove into view at the end, "Row Harder" has achieved an exhausted beauty. (Perhaps the most affecting reason the 51-year-old John Zeigler gives for taking on this ordeal is that he still wants to earn his father's respect.) Wolbach has a TV deal in place but no theatrical distributor -- here's hoping.