Review: Race (2016)

My ratingIMDbRotten Tomatoes
CriticsAudienceCriticsAudience
8/1056/1006.9/1059%81%
Numbers obtained from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes on February 27, 2016.

People being discriminated, segregated and humiliated because they’re considered different and inferior from the others. This could be happening anywhere in the world at any given time in history, unfortunately. But in Race, it focuses simultaneously on African Americans in the U.S. and on Jews in Germany during the 1936 Olympics.

Jesse Owens (Stephan James) wishes to become the greatest track and field athlete in history, but faces multiple obstacles because of the color of his skin. His coach (Jason Sudeikis), however, doesn’t care about that and is just focused on training as hard as he possibly can to make him go to the Olympics in Berlin. Concurrently, we see the American Olympic Committee trying to decide whether the U.S. will participate in the Olympics or not, because they don’t want to support Hitler’s regime.

We already know the end of the movie, since Jesse Owens is known worldwide, but it’s very interesting to see his story told this way and the parallels made with the Nazi and American politics is also very intriguing.

The cast is great and I loved seeing Jason Sudeikis in a drama. He’s always perfect in comedies and I was curious to see how he would fit in a dramatic role. As it turns out, he’s great at it too. Finally, I loved the title and the way it plays with two meanings of the same word. I’m very curious to see how it will be translated to other languages, especially Portuguese…

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