RUNNING in the WRONG DIRECTION
A tribute to Jesse Owens that’s determined to get from biopic point A to B in the swiftest way possible
Jesse Owens, the African- Ameri can athlete who ran ri ngs around Nazi notions of a master race at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, deserves a film as great as his own feats. Alas, Race isn’t it.
It’s a solid and well-meaning movie, to be sure, spanning the period from Owens’ enrolment at Ohio State University in the fall of 1933 to just after his performance at the Summer Games in August, 1936. Owens took home four gold medals for the United States.
But the broad-brush portrait chooses to leave out the athlete’s controversial post-Games life, including an unsuccessful run at a showbiz career — it worked for Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, but he was white — and his flipflopping stance on African- American athletes giving the black-power salute at the ’68 Games in Mexico City.
Perhaps that’s too much plot even for a movie that runs to a little over two hours. But it does leave viewers with a somewhat simplistic picture of the man.
Oddly, Race comes most alive in interstitial scenes that have little to do with Owens directly. We witness a heated debate among members of the U. S. Olympics Committee — Jeremy Irons facing off against William Hurt — as they discuss the possibility of a boycott of the Games; the motion was quashed by only two votes.
Later, Leni Riefenstahl ( Carice van Houten), director of the Nazi propaganda film Olympia, finds herself alternately fighting with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and acting as his linguistic go-between for visiting American officials. At one point she delicately asks if she should “translate or interpret” their remarks.
While on the subject of Germany, it’s worth noting that Race features one of the worst Hitlers in recent memory — honestly, it looks like a guy in a rubber mask — and reuses its one computergenerated aerial shot of the newly built Olympic stadium, as well as throwing in a flyover by the Hindenburg, just when this viewer was wondering if it would make an appearance.
Meanwhile, Owens’ life follows a similarly as-you-expect-it trajectory. As portrayed by Stephan James (Selma) he’s a decent, hardworking fellow, though not above a touch of well-earned arrogance. (At a track meet in 1935 he broke three world records and tied a fourth in less than an hour, essentially setting a world record for beating world records.)
Owens’ coach at Ohio State is Larry Snyder, played by funnyman Jason Sudeikis in an odd but ultimately justified casting choice. Tasked with being adamantly colour- blind as he trains Owens, Snyder winds up the target of a weird form of discrimination himself, when the U.S. Olympic team won’t let him join as a coach. He ultimately pays his own way to Berlin, and Owens’ threat of a one-man boycott unless Snyder is recognized plays as one of the more thrilling moments in the film.
The rest you know. Owens gets taunted by Ohio’s all- white football team, who won’t let him use the showers until they’re finished. He is amazed to find that in Berlin there are no coloured dorms; he gets to room alongside his white teammates. Hitler — or whoever that guy in the mustard suit is — manages not to be there to shake his hand. Everyone who matters to him gathers ’round the wireless to hear the results from the Games.
Meanwhile, Owens’ girlfriend Minnie (Shanice Banton) and their daughter get about as much time in the movie as it takes to dash the hundred metres. But maybe this is director Stephen Hopkins’ tribute to Owens — he is determined to get us from biopic point A to B in the shortest, swiftest way possible. Race opens across Canada on Feb. 19.