In Stephen Hopkins’ Race, an African-American track and field athlete named Jesse Owens travels from the poverty-stricken Ohio to the glamorous 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. Owens attended Ohio State University, and with the help of his coach Larry Snyder, broke several world records on his way to win three gold medals at the Olympics. The movie itself was less impressive than Owens’ feats.

First of all, Hopkins failed to make the movie seem racially driven. I was looking for a movie based entirely off of racism and oppression, but instead, I got a plot line where Owens and his track mates rarely had confrontations with racists, as they were faced with racism far too little to do justice to the awful, white supremacist days of the 1930’s. In other words, I was looking for a rather somber plot, and instead, I got the opposite. Secondly, Hopkins used computer generated subtitles to explain the time periods of the major scenes in the movie. They often got in the way of the focus of the movie, and were unnecessary to the development to Jesse Owens’s heroic life. Instead of having the subtitles fly across the screen like in Star Wars, a still, five-second subtitle would have been perfect.

Throughout the film, the scenes came off as rushed and forced at times. For example, when Jesse’s coach sees him run for the first time, the viewers see his reaction for a very short period of time, as the scene switches shortly after. I, as the viewer, would have wanted to see Snyder and Jesse have a conversation, rather than just Snyder’s facial expression and a few words to his assistant.

Despite the film’s disappointing features, Race did a solid job of revealing the racism in Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule. He did this by showing Hitler’s dissatisfaction with Jesse’s three gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, while also not allowing two Jewish Olympic relayers to run. The 1936 Olympics were one of the only times where I really felt the overlying feeling of racism and oppression in the movie, and this feeling lacked in America. Without this feeling, I cannot and do not recommend Race to any potential viewers, especially for children under 18.