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There's a moment in "Race" that does a remarkable job of capturing what it must have been like for Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Owens (Stephan James) — a 22-year-old African-American athlete — enters the field at the enormous Olympic Stadium the Nazis built for the event. The Hindenburg zeppelin passes overhead, blotting out the sun.
And as Adolf Hitler, enters, 100,000 people rise to their feet, chanting "Sieg Heil" with arms outstretched in the Nazi salute.
It's chilling. It's intimidating. It's masterfully done.
It's one of many fine moments in "Race," a sports movie that really isn't so much about sports. It's about race relations.
It's the story of Owens, a black American hero in an age when it was still OK to toss the n-word at him. This happens when he enrolls at Ohio State University in 1933 and members of the all-white football team use that, along with other epithets. But the college track coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), sees Owens' talent and challenges him to make track his priority, promising Olympic glory if he does.
This is not an easy thing for a poor black kid who has a girlfriend and a young daughter back home in Cleveland.
Snyder learns a few things along the way. This is not the cliché of an older coach/younger athlete seen in so many movies — for one thing, Snyder isn't much older than Owens. For another, both of them have flaws, and "Race" isn't afraid to put them on display.
(The film was made with the cooperation of the Owens family, the Jesse Owens Foundation, the Jesse Owens Trust and company that represents the Owens estate. While Owens is favorably portrayed, he's by no means portrayed as perfect.)
"Race," directed by Stephen Hopkins and written by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, wisely focuses on a relatively narrow window of time —1933-36, when Owens became a college track star and an Olympic champion. It tells parallel stories, however.
As Owens and other athletes train for the 1936 Games, U.S. Olympic officials are under great pressure — from within and without — to boycott. The Nazis are using the Games to promote their policies and threatening to bar Jewish and black athletes.
While some Americans believe participating in the Games would be a tacit endorsement of the Nazis, Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons) insists, "That's politics, not sport." He is dispatched to Berlin, where he makes demands on the German organizers and either collaborates with or is snookered by the Nazis.
(Brundage, who went on to head the IOC from 1952-1972, does not fare well in "Race" and remains a controversial figure four decades after his death.)
Despite the fact that Owens' athletic feats are the stuff of legend, "Race" nicely builds suspense over the outcome. Not just the outcome at the Olympics, but the question of whether he will even go to Germany.
A representative of the NAACP visits the Owens family, telling Jesse he will let his people down if he goes to Berlin — and that Nazi persecution of the Jews and Jim Crow laws in the United States are "all a part of the same great hatred."
Owens is torn, even though he argues that on the track, "There ain't no black and white, there's only fast and slow."
The Germans are part of the story, too. The cold, calculating Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat), is an evil presence. Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten), whose film "Olympia" chronicled the Games, is portrayed much more favorably. German athlete Carl "Lutz" Long (David Cross) is a hero. And Hitler (Adrian Zwicker) himself appears in several scenes, albeit without speaking audibly.
"Race" is, in many ways, a throwback, a biopic that might have been a TV miniseries a couple of decades ago. The production design is great; it looks and feels like the 1930s, from Columbus, Ohio, to New York to Berlin.
The performances are, for the most part, fine — although some of the supporting roles went to actors whose lack of talent is jarring. James does a good job; Sudeikis proves there's more to him than we might have suspected during the eight years he was a regular on "Saturday Night Live."
Irons might have been given more time as Brundage, but at 134 minutes "Race" already feels a bit long. "Race" will entertain you even as it make you think. It tackles the tough topic of race relations without preaching and without flinching.
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
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'Race'
Jesse Owens battles racism at home and in Nazi Germany en route to becoming an Olympic legend.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Feb. 19.
Running time • 134 minutes
Rating • PG-13 for thematic elements and language