Sports themed movies have always been a tough sell for Hollywood…
Most fail at the box office.
One of the more successful sports films in modern times was probably Kevin Costner’s 1989 baseball movie FIELD OF DREAMS which ended up with a total box office gross of $64.5 million.
Other Costner sports movies weren’t so lucky.
His feel-good McFARLAND, USA only brought in $44.5 million in ticket sales while DRAFT DAY flamed out at $28.8 million.
Of course there HAVE been a few hits along the way as well.
The most recent probably being the Jackie Robinson baseball story ’24’ starring Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman.
It wowed them with $95 million at the domestic box office.
Now comes RACE, the greatest face-off at the 1936 summer Olympics.
But it didn’t all happen on the field.
It went down instead between black American athlete Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.
RACE is the incredible true story of the legendary super star whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrust him unto the world stage in Nazi Berlin.
Owens won four gold medals for his extraordinary performances. An achievement which absolutely burned the Fuehrer who refused to congratulate the black athlete by leaving his viewing stand before Owens could reach it.
Goebbels’ excuse: Hitler wanted to avoid traffic……
“Politics has no place in sports”
But the legendary Jesse Owens we now know almost never happened, but for the determination, tolerance and friendship of his Ohio State coach Larry Snyder.
Snyder is played in a straight dramatic performance here by Kansas City export Jason Sudeikis.
Owens is portrayed by relative newcomer Stephan James who last was part of the 2014 SELMA cast.
Interestingly, the major 1936 Olympic scenes were filmed on location in Berlin’s giant Olympic Stadium which to this day is still very much alive hosting, among other events, major soccer games.
(Sidebar: It is also the venue to which in 1995 then KY-102 DJ Skid Roadie and I escorted listeners to see the Rolling Stones perform.)
A fascinating sideline to the story follows Hitler’s personal cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl (Carice Van Houten) who was charged to capture Germany’s ueber alles winning ways for prosperity—except it didn’t play out that way.
But Leni sure knew how to call the shots!
The cast of RACE is rounded out by Jeremy Irons and William Hurt and makes for an absorbing, if not inspiring, new bio-drama opening citywide.
My grade: B
(Reviewed at Glenwood Arts Theatre, Overland Park)
JACK GOES TO THE MOVIES Friday mornings during Kansas City’s Morning News on 98.1 FM, KMBZ.
Wonder if anyone cares these days about Jesse Owens at the Nazi Olympics. Could Sudeikis have picked any less interesting subject to get serious in?
I got an advance copy of the screenplay:
-Jesse Owens, wrapped in an American flag straddles up to the blocks, briefly stopping to clutch a crucifix around his neck and to waive to his crying black mother surrounded by a sea of white, high-fade heads.
– wins race by 60 yards
– goes up to high five hitler because he’s cool like that
– hitler’s face melts off like in Temple of Doom
– stars and stripes confetti explodes out of his Nazi neck stump
– Jesse turns to the crowd who have now torn off all their emblems of nazism
– Sudekis runs onto the cinder track to hug Jessee and lift him up in the air
– He throws his blue hat in the air, freeze frame on his Baldwin denim hat with a big block K C on it.
– Credits roll
– Stephan James loses Oscar as he was not playing an escaped slave as per Oscar guidelines.
“The most recent probably being the Jackie Robinson baseball story ’24’ starring Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman”
“24”? Jackie Robinson has one full day to disarm a nuclear weapon from detonating in downtown Brooklyn! All while dealing with racism and learning to hit a major league curve ball. The clock ticks…
Donald A. Smiley has been much in the news lately for his three-quarter million dollar annual salary and the secretive manner in which a small committee of the Milwaukee World Festival board determines it.