Posted on 02/19/2016 9:11:47 AM PST by Kaslin
It would be hard to manufacture a noteworthy biopic of Jesse Owens. Owens was a remarkable athlete who managed to succeed in a nation that was often blinded by race and he managed to win Olympic gold in a nation that was blinded by hatred. His greatest achievement wasn't winning four gold medals as a track and field athlete for the U.S. Olympic team in 1936. It was inspiring a nation and showing people how important it was to look past a person's skin color or religion.
Despite struggling to stay on track at times, Race -- the latest film about the athlete -- is a commendable achievement that will hopefully inspire youngsters to learn more about Owens.
Instead of offering a complete glimpse at the life of Owens (a difficult task to be sure), this film focuses on the future Olympian when he's beginning his professional training. The feature opens in the fall of 1933, shortly before he became a student at Ohio State University. When Owens (a well-chosen Stephan James) first meets the university's track coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, doing a solid job here in a serious role), the duo both seem to know that Owens has the natural talents to become an Olympian competitor.
The bigger question though is if the United States will want to send athletes to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Hitler (Adrian Zwicker), who is a silent supporting character here, has become the Chancellor of Germany and it's becoming more and more obvious what he wants to do in power.
The film nicely balances Owens' training -- which is oftentimes more psychological than physical --with the fraught political situation that the U.S. Olympic Committee is facing. The committee has to decide whether or not to compete in the Olympics with committee members Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) and Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) arguing on different sides. The debate is laid out as one between "heart" (shouldn't the Olympians have a chance to soar in this international competition?) and "conscience" (can the U.S., in good conscience, go in and support the Nazi-led Olympics?).
Because Owens' achievements are directly tied into the controversial Olympics, the film spends ample time showing the political debates that surrounded those games. When the games eventually begin (halfway through the picture), much of the supporting focus here is on how the Nazis want to use the Olympics as a propaganda victory with Joseph Goebells (Barnaby Metschurat) -- the German minister of propaganda --doing his best to keep Jewish athletes from competing, and Nazi documentarian Leni Riefenstahl capturing the events on film for Hitler.
The feature sometimes stumbles with unnecessary storylines, including Owens' dating life. There are also times when director Stephen Hopkins' vision lacks the power to truly make this inspiring story stand out. There are missed opportunities here for soaring rhetoric and passionate discussion and Hopkins too often settles for mundane chatter.
Race does deserve great credit for what it achieves in doing though. This is a movie that capably captures the times that Owens was living in and the many obstacles he faced both in the United States (where Owens was derided for his skin color) and in Germany, where the Nazis were beginning to show the breadth of their hatred.
When Goebbels chillingly states "Don't worry about the Jews. They're on their way out," the film captures where the Nazi thinking was leading and how Owens -- through his strength and determination -- was able to defy the Nazi's hatred and show what a great athlete and figure he truly was.
I wonder how much the movie covers the relationship between Jesse and Luz Long, his German opponent.
I am amazed if the screenplay was not stuffed full of present-day “Black Lives Matter” political crap.
As long as it’s not another 42. That sucked.
Hats off to Jesse Owens, I’m sure he was a hero and a brave man, but I’ll pass on this one. I am sick of all the racial stuff coming out of the entertainment industry lately.
Black people good, white people evil, yeah we get it.
It probably would have, if that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave had been around at that time
Unfortunately, I would expect that.
Jackie Robinson was a Republican, and yet the recent film on his life was packed full of revisionist race-based political crap.
They used to hold an annual Jesse Owens Games at my high-school’s football stadium. An open track meet for local kids. Jesse Owens was still alive and would attend and hand out the medals. A distinguished, impressive gentleman.
Owens took gold in the 1936 long jump, Long silver, and Japan's Naoto Tajima took the bronze in the long jump. It was probably the first time a white, a black, and an Asian stood together on an Olympic stand; diversity in front of Hitler, long before diversity was cool. Later, Tajima took gold in the triple jump, where Long ended 10th, and Owens was not entered.
Afterward, Owens spent WWII supervising factory workers in Detroit; Tajima spent WWII supervising coal miners in Hokkaido; Long died fighting for the Wehrmacht in Sicily.
After the war, Jesse Owens lived in Chicago, where I grew up. I remember seeing him on television occasionally (e.g., at a Cubs game). He was a heavy smoker, which eventually killed him in his late 60s.
One of Owens’s Olympic teammates, Ralph Metcalfe, also lived in Chicago and later became an alderman and then congressman (Democrat, of course).
My mother always claimed that she and Jesse were good friends in High school. She had a little pewter bulldog figurine that she said Jesse made for her. Of course I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, but my mom was not a story teller.
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