Race

Timed to coincide with Hollywood's new outreach program devoted to racial diversity in the movies, this inspirational bio-pic profiles America's greatest track and field athlete, Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, where he faced off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy. Son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, Owens's (Stephan James) story opens in Cleveland, OH, as he prepares to enroll at Ohio State. Having been told that Jesse is a natural, Coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) asks, “Can you win? What I mean by that: can you work?” Work—and win—he does. At the Big Ten Championship in Ann Arbor, Owens sets three world records and ties in a fourth—all in roughly 45 minutes. So it's off to Berlin, even as the Amateur Athletic Union's president Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt) urges an American boycott to protest against Hitler's racist regime, but is opposed by International Olympic Committee Chairman Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), who insists that politics has no place in the Olympics. “There's no black or white when you're running, only fast and slow,” Owens says. “For those 10 seconds, you're free.” Directed by Stephen Hopkins, the film's title signifies Owens's sport and his African-American heritage, which forces him and his wife (Shanice Banton) to ride in a freight elevator to a banquet held in his honor at New York's still-segregated Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Unfortunately, despite it's stirring subject, Race is presented as an old-fashioned, very conventional bio-pic. Still, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (4 min.), the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Becoming Jesse Owens” (4 min.) and “The Owens Sisters” with Jesse Owens's daughters (3 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus digital and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a small extras package for a formulaic bio-pic.] (S. Granger)