by Frank Calvillo
There’s a line in Aloe Blacc’s fantastic and uplifting “Let the Games Begin,” which acts as the end credits song to Race, which states: “the will to win is all in your mind.” It’s not necessarily a new or revolutionary lyric by any means. Yet its simple words encompass the heart and soul of Race; a film about how achieving the seemingly impossible against the toughest of obstacles is indeed a combination of inner strength coupled with one’s own determination to succeed no matter what.
Race chronicles the life story of famed athlete Jesse Owens (Stephan James) as he arrives at Ohio State University to run track under the strict hand of Larry Synder (Jason Sudeikis), a former olympic hopeful turned alcoholic college coach. Thanks to his impressive ability, the young Jesse immediately becomes a star runner, which causes him to look closely at what life path he should follow, including competing in the 1936 Olympic Games being held in Berlin. Competing proves a difficult choice however, as the games committee, headed by Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) and Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) are greatly concerned about America participating in the games due to the emergence of Naziism.
There are two movies going on simultaneously throughout Race. Both are great and compelling in their own ways, but if there’s any fault to be found with the screenplay’s balancing act, it’s that both storylines are so involving that they loudly call for their own separate movies.
The first of these plots is, of course, Jesse Owens’s journey from a working-class Ohio family to a four-time olympic gold medalist. Though this is a fact based drama, it can’t fully avoid those moments that accompany other similarly-themed films concerning prejudice or sports. I’m not saying that Owens’s life has been Hollywood-ized to the point of unrecognizability. The young athlete’s commitment to the sport and the courage it took for him to compete at the Olympic Games in the face of such turmoil is on full display and never once feels trivialized. More than this, though, what really sets this aspect of Race apart from other movies of its kind is how it inserts slight observations about the reasons behind Owen’s love of the sport, and specifically the feeling of absolute freedom and peace garnered from running, which no one or no thing in the world can take away.
The second film on hand is the conflict of the Olympic Games committee having their country represented when Berlin, the site of that year’s games, are dead set against jews and African Americans competing. Scenes focusing on the struggle between the two countries to come to an understanding are incredibly tense and infused with a great illustration of the kind of political turmoil present during the time. The inclusion of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s (Carice van Houten) documenting of the games only adds to the overall strength of these scenes which carry an air of a truly great historical drama.
James makes for a solid Owens, noting all of his character flaws and attributes for a truly human portrait of one of the most legendary athletes of all time. Irons, meanwhile, does well in one of the most substantial big-screen roles he’s had in the last couple of years, while van Houten is incredibly dynamic as the iconic Riefenstahl. It’s a shame that Hurt fails to do anything with his handful of scenes before being quickly ushered away at the film’s midpoint.
I have a feeling a number of eyes will be on Sudeikis however, in what is his first high-profile dramatic role. While Sudeikis isn’t the best dramatic actor on the block, and despite the number of actors I thought could have knocked the role out of the park, (such as Sam Rockwell, Michael Shannon or Josh Brolin), I still found myself eagerly anticipating the actor’s next scene.
When the two films beautifully merge in Race’s final act, there’s an undeniable power and glory at watching such monumental events taking place as the film reveals itself to be an unsuspectingly compelling and deeply important offering in the sports movie genre. So many milestones and barriers were broken throughout the course of Race’s events which more than deserve to be held up and praised in this way, including the defiance of Nazi Germany, the continued emergence of a gifted filmmaker, and the transformation of a black 1930s college student into an American hero.
