Race is the story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics. It's really not well put together, I'm sorry to say. I really feel like they could have cut out most of the preliminary stuff, since it doesn't do such a good job of establishing Owens as particularly admirable or sympathetic. His coach, played by Jason Sudekis, is the one who really stands out, especially in one sequence where he lectures his track team on focus and distractions, while proving the substance of his speech by the manner in which he gives it. While Owens is a natural talent, the coach has little use for talent without hard work, and demands more work of Owens in refining his technique. When Owens falters under the demands of trying to support his girlfriend and their child back home, while also training in track (he seems to be a student-athlete at the University of Ohio at this time, though a scholarship is not explicitly mentioned, seems unlikely for blacks in the early 1930s, and he is never once seen doing anything remotely academic - on the other hand, it seems unlikely that his family would have the resources to pay tuition at OSU), the coach brusquely provides the sort of no-show job that would be a major scandal in the modern NCAA once he learns of the situation. When his college career catapults Owens to fame, and he becomes distracted by a groupie, it is the coach who helps him make a choice about his life. Once Owens makes the Olympic team, that same coach, not wanted by the national team's staff, travels at his own expense to Germany to be there for Owens, and to help him out when the US coaches are inexplicably hostile to Owens and his fellow black sprinters. When Owens' specially ordered shoes do not arrive, the coach ventures out in the dark streets of Nazi Germany to find replacements, risking danger at the hands of the same police who are seen loading people into trucks for nefarious purposes.

The other athletes besides Owens are not well developed, but it seems at points like the movie thinks you should care about them and their relationships with him. The racial issues are also badly handled. The only real racism Owens experiences is some verbal bullying from the football players at Ohio State...but at OSU, football is king, and I would imagine that if they were actually forced to share a locker room with the track team, the contemporary football team would not treat the runners any better. Later on, in Germany for the Olympics, the US coaches start spewing racial epithets at the players when they utilize non-standard techniques we see the hero-coach teaching them at the beginning of the film. Absolutely no motivation is given for such counter-indicated behavior, as the bad coach was never shown objecting to the presence of blacks on the Olympic team.

Another issue raised in the film is the debate about boycotting the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin, due to German racial policies. Again, the movie doesn't seem to have any idea where it stands in this regard. William Hurt plays JT Mahoney, an Olympic official who voices the boycott position, while Jeremy Irons plays Avery Brundage, who is in favor of competing. Brundage travels to Germany to take the measure of the Nazi regime, and in a meeting with Goebbels, emphatically, even belligerently, demands that the Nazis moderate their racial propaganda and policies, before going home to speak in favor of sending a US team to compete. Any question of his sympathy for the German position seems absurd, unless you are sympathetic of the rather absurd boycott position, and think Brundage is thus exposed as a hypocrite somehow. Hurt's Mahoney resigns when the committee narrowly votes to compete instead of boycott. Later, Owens is visited by an NAACP official who asks that he personally boycott the Games out of solidarity for all racially oppressed people. Owens is initially reluctant, but allows St. Coach to talk him into trying out for the team and keeping his options open. The coach expresses it in terms of missing a rare opportunity and subsequently regretting it, as he himself had a similar experience in his own youth. The rarity of ANY opportunity for fame for a black man in 1936 never seems to come up, and the weight given to the boycott position seems strange, considering the absolutely superior outcome of American minorities defeating German athletes under Hitler's eye. Shortly before Owens informs his coach of his possible intention to go along with the boycott, the coach and several athletes and other personnel are shown listening to the first Schmeling-Louis fight, but no mention is made of the outcome by any characters. Was Schmeling's win disheartening, and supporting some notion of black inferiority? Should it have provided an impetus for black on German revenge? Why have it in there at all if it doesn't do anything to the story?

Eventually, Owens decides, rather anti-climatically, to compete, and goes to Germany, where to his surprise, he has the same accommodations at his white teammates. He is also greeted by a crowd of admirers, but it isn't clear whether they are German fans or Americans come for the Games. Later, when he fouls repeatedly during the long jump, the world champion German jumper suggests an alternative technique, which allows Owens to succeed at qualifying on his last chance. When Owens clinches the gold, the German, Luz Long, encourages him to take his final jump anyway, just to see if Owens can top his own record. After their competition, Long congratulates Owens and leaves the field arm-in-arm with him. They get together in their rooms where he expresses his contempt for the Nazi regime and his satisfaction in Owens' victory, while making it clear that he did not throw the event and was trying to win for himself, not his country. He describes his own encounter with inhuman Nazi breeding program, among other atrocities.

In spite of demonstrating their awareness of the evils of Nazism, the filmmakers nonetheless make Leni Riefenstahl (Game of Thrones' Carice Van Houten) a positive figure, showing her defying Goebbels and insisting on filming subsequent events, after Goebbels orders the cameras off in response to Owens' initial victories, and having Riefenstahl shooting additional footage that would seem to be enhancing Owens' image. Considering how little they did to show any real persecution or bigotry suffered by Jesse Owens in America (or his post-Olympic need to work menial jobs for a living, IIRC, his only major endorsement was with Adidas, a German company, which the film hints at without actually saying so), Long and Riefenstahl come across as more heroic and admirable. Owens worked hard and to the best of my knowledge, never let his sufferings make him a bitter asshole, but that's not the same thing as publicly defying the totalitarian leaders of the country in which you live, who have already made an international reputation for intolerance and brutality.

The film takes a couple of odd positions near the end. It perpetuates the myth of Hitler snubbing Owens, which Owens always denied, claiming to have been photographed shaking hands with Hitler, and that he and Hitler had exchanged waves in the stadium. In the scene, after his first win, Brundage takes Owens to meet "someone," and the ascend to the box where the German leaders are sitting, only to be told that Hitler left rather than congratulate other winners. IIRC, it was actually an issue of Hitler congratulating German winners, vs. winners from other countries, and the IOC said he had to congratulate ALL winners if he did it for ANY winners. Leading one of the largest countries in the world is kind of a reasonable excuse to be too busy to do such a thing, even there weren't so many bullshit sports back then. In any event, it seemed like the film was portraying Hitler as refusing to do the congratulations because he didn't want to do so for blacks or Jews, and thus he left early to avoid Owens. Later, before Owens' final event, the four man relay race, for which he had not tried out or qualified, Goebbels is shown pressuring Brundage into not letting two Jews on the relay team compete. The American coaches announce that they are changing up the team, and substitute two black runners, including Owens, for the Jews. The Jews protest and complain that it's because they're Jews, which the coaches deny. Owens refuses to run unless they agree to the substitution, which they later do, and Owens, despite concerns about not knowing how to pass a baton, helps build such a huge lead that the white anchor runner is ahead by an impressive distance at the finish.

I don't know if it's on record that the substitution was made for the reasons given, but it makes no sense. Why would the Germans let blacks compete and not Jews? If they reacted with such poor grace to Owens' first three medals, why would they give him a fourth chance to show them up? It stands to reason that if you can't go with the runners you had originally picked, you'd grab the fastest guys available to fill in for them. A three time gold medalist would be the glaringly obvious pick to fill in a whole in any racing team, up to maybe even the Kentucky Derby. Also, from a racial-stereotype standpoint, forcing someone to substitute a black athlete for a Jewish one is more like doing them a favor.

Its worth noting as well that upon their arrival in Germany, the two Jewish runners promptly pull out Star of David necklaces and tauntingly dangle them at various cops or guards they encounter. Next to Long's later defiance of his own government, this comes across as petty and unseemly. They can be relatively certain of their immunity to any consequences or danger from their actions, so it could hardly be called brave. It isn't proving any points or sending any message. It's just an immature antic, especially considering what their darker teammates are going through on a daily basis in the country where Jews have in general been the best off in their history. Considering that Goebbels phrases the demand that the same two men be pulled from competition as a matter of courtesy to a host, it is just as plausible that their behavior, rather than their race on its own, was what precipitated their withdrawal.

The movie ends with the cliched scene of Owens and St Coach and their wives attending some fancy event, and the Owens being refused entrance at the main door, to the shame of the doorman, and forced to go in the service entrance, where a white bellboy requests an autograph with an awestruck expression. The ending credit messages describing the rest of the characters' lives note that Jesse Owens never received any congratulations or invitations from the White House, and that Avery Brundage "somehow survived" his association with the Nazis. Aside from the highly questionable, not explicitly shown, scene of him acquiescing to Goebbels' demand to pull the Jews, the only questionable action is some vague allusions to helping the Germans build a new embassy in Washington (he himself points out to the Germans that with his wealth, their contract would be an insignificant bribe, and only aid he is shown giving them is advising they won't be able to build the embassy in the plans they show him due to DC zoning laws).

Despite excellent and potentially inspirational source material, "Race" suffers from a confusing and unclear message, and sloppy execution of whatever story it is trying to tell.