Movie Review: 2016 RACE C

Race was a poorly produced film about  Jesse Owens, the legendary athletic superstar whose capabilities allowed him to become the great track and field athlete in the late 1930's. 
History thrust him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faced off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy. Race could have been great film about courage, determination, tolerance, and friendship, and an inspiring drama about one man's fight to become an Olympic legend, but unfortunately fell on it's face because of poor writing , acting that lacked real emotional content.

From Another Review:

A heroic real-life sports landmark runs out of creative steam long before the finish line. Because Race ladles on the locker-room hate speech, it feels like a serious movie (as the obvious title would imply). But director Stephen Hopkins mines virtually no tension from the relationship between Owens and his white trainer, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, distractingly off-period and smarmy), who insists that his young talent “work to win.” On the track, Owens is his own man, but his subservience to a white-dominated administrative structure could have been made sharper and more timely: Too quickly, Synder goes from “sir” to “coach.”

By the time we get to Berlin’s massive arena—re-created in a Gladiator–like swirl of roaring digital crowds—Race knows it has an ace up its sleeve. The sporting events can’t help but be thrilling, even if they’re over too soon. Yet certain ironies are softened for the tenderest audience members: Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten) gets a glowing makeover as a defiant truth-teller, while Hitler’s infamous snub of Owens is presented as fact, when the real Owens is said to have carried around a photo of the two of them shaking hands until his 1980 death. Why not include that controversial detail, building out the shameful reality of FDR’s refusal to extend his own congratulations? Race is the most timid, lackadaisical movie that could have been made out of potentially classic material.