Stephan James’s committed turn as Jesse Owens stops this grandstanding film about the 1936 Olympics from descending into cheesiness
More marathon than sprint, Stephen Hopkins’ period biopic affords the Jesse Owens story – one of the greatest eff-yous ever recorded in competitive sport – a reverential, middle-of-the-pack treatment: stumbling exposition, grandstanding performers, a thousand yards of rousing speeches and music cues. It’s regrettably typical that Stephan James’s Owens is given a caucasian interlocutor in coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, reining in the smirks), and that his personal struggles are partially obscured by the negotiations of diplomat Jeremy Irons with a chilly Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) and saucy Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten). Still, it raises its game – as drama, spectacle and camp – the closer it gets to the Olympic stadium, where Hitler awaits, muttering darkly in the stands like a Voldemort in epaulettes. That it remains broadly watchable owes much to James’s lean,...
More marathon than sprint, Stephen Hopkins’ period biopic affords the Jesse Owens story – one of the greatest eff-yous ever recorded in competitive sport – a reverential, middle-of-the-pack treatment: stumbling exposition, grandstanding performers, a thousand yards of rousing speeches and music cues. It’s regrettably typical that Stephan James’s Owens is given a caucasian interlocutor in coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, reining in the smirks), and that his personal struggles are partially obscured by the negotiations of diplomat Jeremy Irons with a chilly Goebbels (Barnaby Metschurat) and saucy Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten). Still, it raises its game – as drama, spectacle and camp – the closer it gets to the Olympic stadium, where Hitler awaits, muttering darkly in the stands like a Voldemort in epaulettes. That it remains broadly watchable owes much to James’s lean,...
- 6/2/2016
- by Mike McCahill
- The Guardian - Film News
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