Race (2016) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Drama | Sport

Tagline: The incredible true story of gold medal champion Jesse Owens

The incredible true story of Olympic legend Jesse Owens is vividly brought to life in Race. In his epic quest to be the greatest athlete in history, Owens (Stephan James, Selma) chooses to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he must overcome not only elite competition, but also the brutal racial climate of Adolf Hitler's Germany. Also starring Jason Sudekis (We're the Millers) and Academy Award winners Jeremy Irons and William Hurt, Race is a film about courage, determination, tolerance, friendship and trust that critics are calling "Movie magic!" (Brian Truitt, USA TODAY).

Storyline: In the 1930s, Jesse Owens is a young man who is the first in his family to go to college. Going to Ohio State to train under its track and field coach, Larry Snyder, the young African American athlete quickly impresses with his tremendous potential that suggests Olympic material. However, as Owens struggles both with the obligations of his life and the virulent racism against him, the question of whether America would compete at all at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany is being debated vigorously. When American envoy, Avery Brundage, finds a compromise personally persuasive and tolerable enough with the Third Reich to avert a boycott, Owens has his own moral struggle on whether to go. Upon resolving that issue, Owens and his coach travel to Berlin to participate in a competition that would mark Owens as the greatest of the American Olympians even as the German film director, Leni Riefenstahl, locks horns with her country's Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, to film the politically embarrassing fact for posterity. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, May 14, 2016 If there was an Academy Award given for a movie title that makes the best use of the double entendre, Race would win it running away. In the film, Director Stephen Hopkins, working his biggest picture since 1998's Lost in Space, tells the story of American Olympic hero Jesse Owens, a four-time gold medalist at the 1936 Summer games in Berlin. At home and particularly abroad in Germany, Owens faced tremendous scrutiny and prejudice based on the color of his skin, but his skill on the track as both a runner and a jumper, as well as his persistence to succeed and the support of his coach and an unlikely ally, made him a champion and a hero. The film efforts to intersect the larger political sphere as it was in the mid-1930s with an intimate tale of Owens' rise to stardom and runs not against the odds on the track, but rather the world around him. The film is a success on the macro level, even as it doesn't quite find its own identity on the micro level against a growing number of comparable films that tackle similar basic subject material, only in different arenas and different faces standing tall against prejudice.

Jesse Owens (Stephan James) is the fastest man alive. He enrolls at Ohio State to run for Coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) who is impressed with Owens' raw gifts but challenges him to get a better start off the line and prove that he can work for glory, not simply run his way to it. Owens is asked to commit to excellence, which he must accomplish in the face of incessant bigotry from white schoolmates. His skill on the track earns him a shot at immortality in the 1936 Olympic games, taking place in less-than-friendly territory in Berlin, Germany, right in the heart of the Nazi movement and all the racial prejudices therein. The games are overseen by Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) himself. Owens must prove his worth on the track and carry himself with dignity, even as the world around him tries to tear him down.

Race compares favorably to, and in some ways surpasses, Prefontaine, a 1997 film about American athlete Steve Prefontaine, a popular figure in his own right and the star American runner at the next games held in (West) Germany in 1972. Race certainly boasts significantly higher production values. It also works hard to tell a story greater than a man while still exploring the man in somewhat intimate detail. Race isn't a full-on biopic. It's instead a string of snapshots from a peak time in Owens' life as he finds his stride as one of the world's great athletes first at Ohio State and, later in the film, in Germany. As the film begins, his mother is sending him off to college. He's leaving behind his girlfriend and their daughter, whom he is financially supporting from a distance. This allows Race to find and tell the meatiest moments of Owens' career without delving into deeper backstory. His life isn't so much pre-established as it is simply filled in and implied as necessary through the first act. And unlike Prefontaine, there's a much larger social and political context to consider, something the filmmakers hope will transition the film away from crude biopic and depiction of athletics into something more globally and socially substantial.

It works, to a point. The movie feels a little unbalanced and overdone in its quest to bring together a larger world of prejudice and the man who found himself in the middle of scorn and glory. The movie never quite finds a real tangible and intimate sense of struggle, even as that's the centerpiece of the story. Race often feels as if it's going through the motions, whether during Owens' time at Ohio State when football players denounce him or later in Germany when the full weight of the Nazi regime stands against him. He finds a friend in both places, in his coach at Ohio State and a German competitor in the long jump at the Olympics, the latter arguably the movie's best opportunity to more deeply explore real human relationships building in the overreaching shadow of prejudice. The movie tries, but it never quite succeeds in really getting to the heart of the relationship and its broader implications. The political machinations come to a head in one of the movie's best scenes when Owens, after winning his first gold medal, is taken to meet Hitler who refuses to shake hands with "that," as Joseph Goebbels calls Owens, dehumanizing him and underscoring the regime's stance against him and others they considered "inferior." Yet even that moment almost feels like any other in the movie, part of a larger well-oiled machine that goes about its business with honest intentions but not much of a real sense of dramatic novelty or greater importance. 42 explored discrimination in sports and focused on the person while still examining the greater world around Jackie Robinson. Race takes the opposite approach, seemingly beginning with the larger world and pushing into the man, which yields a less dramatic, and ultimately less interesting, story, despite much potential to find the same thematic and emotional impact as Writer/Director Brian Helgeland's excellent baseball biopic.

Race is a solid movie, but it can't shake the feeling that it's content to go through the motions. Jesse Owens' story is incredible, personally, politically, socially, and globally alike, but the film never quite finds the right balance between all those areas. Not really a biopic, not exactly social or political commentary, not exclusively contextualized history, it prefers a catchall approach that builds and reveals Owens' story but never takes flight with it. Perhaps in a world where movies like 42 didn't exist and the greater "Inspirational Sports" genre wasn't so prevalent it might feel a little more special, but as it is Race accomplishes little more than giving an honest effort and yielding a solid foundational movie. Universal's Blu-ray does offer splendid video, solid audio, and a few throwaway supplements. It's worth watching, but probably only worth buying at a steep discount.

[CSW] -3.8- I'm just Glad his story was presented to a new generation of Americans and a few of us older ones too. We are so quick to let our true heroes fall to the wayside. I don't think we will truly understand what Jesse Owens had to endure to be one of the greats and a national hero to all of America. I'm so glad he didn't allow himself to be used as a pawn for others. I really believe more than just his natural God given athleticism, it took real courage and character to stand up for others with dignity and respect for self. A true hero.
[V4.5-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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