Race – Film Review by Frank L.

Directed by Stephen Hopkins
Writers: Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse
Stars: Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis, Eli Goree

Race lasts two hours and fourteen minutes and tries to show Jesse Owens’ struggles as an African American who was chosen as a member of the United States of America’s Olympic athletics team in 1936. In addition it attempts to show his love life, an extra-curricular encounter with a second girl, the rows within the American Olympic committee about the wisdom in supporting the Olympic games in Hitler’s Berlin, their negotiations with Joseph Goebbels, the United States’ own far from fair treatment of its African American citizens, the use by Goebbels of Leni Riefenstahl to make a film for Nazi propaganda purposes, the fate of two American Jewish runners at the games and the relationship of Owens with the German athlete Carl “Lutz” Long.  In other words, this film attempts to cover a lot of ground!

Jessie Owens’ performances in Berlin in 1936 in Berlin in winning four gold medals was a great athletic achievement. Undoubtedly because of Hitler’s rabidly racist policies his personal triumph cast more than a doubt on Hitler’s Aryan supremacy propaganda. If Hopkins had stuck principally to this line it would have told the remarkable story which is still eighty years later a story worthy of the telling. Stephan James is impressive as Owens as is David Kross as Carl “Lutz” Long whose true Olympic spirit surpassed the racial nastiness which Hitler and his cohorts were pedalling. Jeremy Irons as Avery Brundage and William Hurt as Jeremiah Mahoney are exemplary as they conduct the row within the American Olympic Committee. This is all good material, much of the rest is superfluous and only clutters. His love life could have been easily removed, as it does not appear to have been anything out of the ordinary.

In the year of the 80th anniversary of Jesse Owens’ great triumph, it is fitting it is remembered and honoured. This film grapples with the immensity of his achievement but by becoming side tracked  into subsidiary issues it fails to create the triumph to which Jesse Owens is entitled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31LnSw47xo