As connect-the-dots biopics go, the Jesse Owens story RACE isn’t bad, primarily because it’s not afraid to venture off the dots every so often, although not always successfully. What made Owens’ story so compelling when he was living it was a combination of great athleticism and timing. There’s no denying that the Owens on display during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin might have been the greatest athlete in the history of the world. But the pressure of being a black American, often despised in his own country—and certainly loathed by Adolf Hitler leering down at Owens from a private box in the Olympic Stadium—besting Hitler’s finest Aryan runners is almost too good to be true as a storytelling device.
Without a doubt, RACE captures these moments quite beautifully, beginning with a minutes-long unbroken shot of Owens walking into the stadium before tens of thousands of onlookers and running his first 100-meter race. You could have opened or closed with that race, and this movie would have been infinitely better, but you have a lot of backstory and a fair amount of aftermath to deal with in this version of the tale.
I have no doubt in my mind that Jesse Owens (played by SELMA’s Stephan James) was a good man, and this film offers us nothing to the contrary. At a young age, he worked to take care of his family back home, as well as his new wife Minnie Ruth (Shanice Banton) and their newborn child. He never fought back when whiles insulted him, even his fellow athletes in college, where he began his training with Ohio State track-and-field coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, the usually comedic actor in a credible dramatic turn).
Owens made friends in the unlikeliest of places, and while he sometimes made it clear verbally that he understood the racial problem in America, his way of dealing with it was to be the better runner. And very little of this makes for particularly compelling cinema. I’m certainly not suggesting that screenwriters Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse change Owens as a character just for the sake of a more interesting film, but maybe we don’t need such a long preamble when the exciting material happens in Berlin.
The training sequences and watching his bond with Snyder grow is nothing we haven’t seen before in a sports-related film, but director Stephen Hopkins (PREDATOR 2, THE GHOST IN THE DARKNESS, and many episodes of “24” and “House of Cards”) peppers unusual side-stories throughout RACE that make it sometimes fascinating, sometimes just plain odd. The subplot about the U.S. Olympic committee (led by Avery Brundage, played by Jeremy Irons) deciding whether the nation should boycott the games because of the Nazi’s policies on Jews and non-whites should have been a centerpiece to Owens’ story, but making Brundage a corrupt corporate head who cared more about making money off the games than issues of equality, while maybe true, cause the film to drag.
Far more interesting is the other major subplot involving Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) working with Hitler’s favorite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten of “Game of Thrones”) to document the games in the film Olympia. The two didn’t see eye to eye on the concept for the documentary, but Race makes the case (as others have throughout history) that Riefenstahl wasn’t interested in glorifying the Master Race at all; she was obsessed with the perfect human form in any shape or color, and her fascinating with Owens was undeniable, even as Goebbels attempted to shut down the cameras whenever Owens was competing, once it became clear that he was going to win everything.
Perhaps most significant to the messages in RACE is the portrayal of the friendship that began during the competition between Owens and his closest German competitor, Carl “Luz” Long (David Kross of THE READER), who deeply admired Owens as a pure athlete who cared nothing for politics. I wish there had been more scenes of the two of them getting to know each other, discussing their countries’ differences, but this film—which soars past the two-hour mark by quite a bit—would have been made even longer by doing so.
Even today, there is something deeply satisfying about watching Hitler and his cronies squirm with each new Owens’ victory. And his friendship with Long provided even more of a slap in Hitler’s face (for which Long paid dearly after the games). But even after this fairly epic-length film, I don’t feel like I learned that much about what drove Jesse Owens to be the best, which seems strange since this film was sanctioned by Owens’ family. It’s also frustrating to a lesser degree that so much emphasis is placed on Snyder, although by all accounts he was instrumental in getting Jesse to improve his running style and get him into the Olympics. But once we get to Berlin, the film should be all about Owens, and it just isn’t.
Even with its flaws, RACE is an easy film to watch and enjoy. There are only a few truly dead moments where you’ll wish your movie screen had a fast-forward button. Stephan James pulls off the almost impossible balancing act of showing us Jesse Owens, the man and the myth in a single character, and anything resembling depth in this character is the result of his fine work. I find myself split on whether to actually recommend Race, although I think I’m leaning toward doing so. There are enough strengths in the film and the Riefenstahl material is just kooky enough to keep things interesting.
