The Jericho Mile

The Jericho Mile (1980) is available to watch online on iFILM — a TV drama directed by Michael Mann, starring Peter Strauss as Rain Murphy, a lifer at California's Folsom Prison. Murphy keeps to himself. He doesn't talk to the other inmates, doesn't look for angles. He runs. Every day, alone, around the same track.

Prison staff clock his times and realize he's outpacing most competitive runners on the outside. The offer comes: a chance to qualify for the Olympic trials. Murphy isn't interested — until something outside the walls makes the stakes personal. Brian Dennehy and Roger E. Mosley round out a cast that makes Folsom feel genuinely lived-in.

Mann made this three years before Miami Vice changed television, and the film shows the same grip on pressure and male stoicism that would define his later work. It won an Emmy Award and a Peabody. Stream The Jericho Mile (1980) online on iFILM.