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, committed turn, but what’s around him often seems to be carving its lightning-bolt history into not stone but easily digestible cheese.
