The incredible true story of gold medal champion Jesse Owens
2016-02-19
$5.0M
134 min
Based on the story of Jesse Owens, the athlete whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy.
Wow, Hopkins directed this and, honestly, at best he's directed a lot of guilty pleasure movies. You know, the movies that you know are bad but you like them anyway. This one is actually, well, good.
It's a legit good film and that is odd for Hopkins.
Anyway, the failing is the Nazi thing. The discrimination in America plays, because that was really the principal challenge that Owens needed to overcome to even make it to the Olympics in the first place. That was a struggle in and of itself.
But, when it came to Germany it should have been more of a focus on him, and how he beat the "master race" and, instead, it was a little too focused on the Nazis. And, honestly, everyone knows who the Nazis are and what they did. We aren't watching the movie because of that, we are watching the movie because of what Owens did.
However, despite that, the movie works with a strong opening act that dealt in an albeit heavy-handed but still absolutely dramatically compelling story about Owens. The only fault is that it loses focus in Germany.
