Hulk and Plastic Man regret going up against the Flash.

The Race-ist.

Isn’t there a punchline that goes, “faster than Jesse Owens at a Klan rally”? And there’s BLAZING SADDLES, when African-American Cleavon Little, discovered hiding under a klansman hood declares, “And now for my next impression: Jesse Owens!” – and runs like the devil. Point being: African-American Olympic sprinter Jesse Owens has entered Western vernacular for his race-ISM, and is also inextricably linked with racism.

So the title of the movie RACE is double entendre impact for the exact same reasons. It’s about Jesse Owens. And his races. And his race.

RACE is not a political movie trying to re-litigate the sins of the 1936 world – and there were many, on both sides of the Atlantic. Movie is a grand tribute to the gifted young runner from Chicago, Jesse Owens, who had to field the sociopolitical climate of his day and yet pull out breathtaking feats of athleticism.

In the 1936 Berlin Olympics (known as “Hitler’s Olympics”) Owens would win four gold medals, for the 100 meters, 200 meters, Long Jump, and 4 x 100 meter relay. It is reported Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who viewed the Games as an opportunity to promote his Nazi ideology, refused to meet with Owens or shake his hand. And American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – who benefitted from a black man stepping on Hitler’s “Aryan Supremacy” – did the same. Ironic, considering the U.S. sent an envoy from the American Olympic Committee to Germany to forcefully request that the Games allow the participation of blacks and Jews! Hypocrisy much?

Stephan James is Jesse Owens, the first of his family to go to college, attending Ohio State for the racing opportunities, training under coach Snyder (Jason Sudeikis, as serious as a muscle cramp, eschewing his comic flair for a pragmatic realist for whom winning is everything). Aware of the open racism on campus (“blacks don’t shower here”), Snyder, for whom race is a non-issue, even suggests to Jesse, “Maybe you could’ve gone to some place … more progressive.”

At their first meeting, Jesse averts his eyes downwards, almost like an introvert. But it’s not because he’s shy. It’s because in the 1930s a black man had to act subservient to a white man if he didn’t want to get in trouble. It brings tears to our eyes to even realize that Jesse has to be instructed by Snyder, “You can sit down.” And Snyder’s curt directive – going against popular consensus, we would discover – “You should look a man in the eye when he’s speaking to you.”

One look at this guy’s form and I’d wear brown pants too!

Jesse’s father is close-mouthed and pissed off constantly, for reasons that folks who have never experienced racism will never comprehend. He knows the denigration his son is going to suffer. While mother does the Hollywood Exposition Shuffle: “I thought I was gonna lose you at five, but God made you for a reason; you’ve got great things in your future.” I’m 100-percent certain these lines never, ever issued from mama’s mouth. Shanice Banton is Ruth, a girl whom Jesse has a child with, and there is some boring time given to the B-story of wooing her.

William Hurt is on the Olympic Committee; Jeremy Irons is Avery Brundage, the U.S. envoy who meets with Josef Goebbels (West Berliner Barnaby Metschurat in a chilling, dead-eyed performance that would freeze a vampire’s undead blood); Carice van Houten is German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, a ballsy female director intent on capturing the historic Games for posterity, even after Minister for Propaganda Goebbels shuts down her crew after Owens’ third victory – Leni dredges them back into operation against Goebbels’ vampire-killing scowl.

Up against the racism in his own country and the racist fascism in another, Jesse’s moral struggle would be a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situation, where the leaders of the black community (the new org known as NAACP) urge him to boycott the games to make a statement. The thinking: if Americans attend, they are normalizing Hitler’s regime. While others remind Jesse that if he doesn’t attend, his voice, his talent, would never be heard at all. No one hears a “statement” made through absence. His presence and his wins would “stick it up Hitler’s ass!”

The most poignant moment is when German long jumper and European record holder Carl “Luz” Long (David Kross) helps Jesse find a mark to make a legal jump. And Jesse beats him. To Carl’s joy as well. No better testament to a sportsman’s spirit than to be happy when beaten by a man at his best. Luz is probably the only true German friend Jesse would make.

Adolf Hitler sees how Americans treat their blacks and gets his ideas for war crimes.

RACE is set in a time when “negro” was the preferred nomenclature and “nigger” was openly spat in public without fear of recrimination, and when the word “Nazi” didn’t carry the horrific baggage it does today. There are two stories running congruently – that of the 1936 Olympics at ground level, following the athletes and their training, trials and triumphs; and at the administration level where the politicians bullshitted and the Olympic committee fumfahed.

The races are directed and edited with an air of excitement and suspense, even though we know going in that Owens runs down the competition like a smooth criminal cheetah. His first 100 meter Olympic final is an amazing piece of filmmaking, an almost-unbroken take from the moment Jesse walks into the arena (amidst a stadium chanting Sieg Heil! to the Fuhrer), to the ribbon, ten short seconds away.

The period is well represented visually, and we must remember it is before WWII, so there is no PRIVATE RYAN sheen to the proceedings, although we do see the first signs of the new world disorder, with quick shots of people being manhandled into trucks. But is this any worse than the American disorder? In the final scene, Jesse and his wife are refused entry to his own gala honoring his Olympic glory, and must use the back entrance with the other slaves— I mean, “hired help.”

He was the Usain Bolt of his day. He was the fastest man in the world. And, by the way, what’s the difference between Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler?
A: Jesse Owens can finish a race.

END

Plight of the Valkyries.

When I heard Tom Cruise was to play a World War II Nazi, I laughed my LMAO off. Tough sell for a non-actor. And by non-actor, I mean movie star. And by movie star, I mean he can’t act.But then it all comes clear. The role was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who was involved in one of the more famous assassination plots against Hitler – so Cruise was not really being asked to extend his acting bone; he was a disenfranchised Nazi, a veritable “liberal” in America’s eyes. He was a traitor to the Germans, but you know what they say: One man’s traitor is another man’s Cruise.

Colonel Cuken von Poffenberg

And, ludicrous as it may sound, Cruise and director Bryan Singer (X-MEN) actually boast of the “risk” for Cruise in taking such a role. What risk? His character is the Hero, with a beautiful wife (Carice van Houten) and four loving, blond kids (cos he’s German, see); he’s principled, a born leader, and hates the Nazis so much he’s practically American. He doesn’t even speak German in the film! Associated Press actually published this stupid article: Tom Cruise taking risk with Nazi film `Valkyrie’.

In VALKYRIE, it is 1944 and Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom many on both sides regard as an “insane genius,” is not only losing the war that he started, he is committing atrocities and driving Germany’s credibility with the rest of the world straight into the toilet. Kinda like George W. Bush – without the “genius” bit. We meet Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Mr. Cruise, proudly pretending he is “taking a risk”) as a young rebel, displeased with Hitler’s management of the war, his mission impossible: “to serve Germany – or the Fuehrer – not both.”

Then the Allies bomb him. Stauffenberg loses his right hand, half his left hand, and his left eye. If that doesn’t make you wanna blow up your Chancellor, well…

Stauffenberg is recruited by a cast of “Chermans,” so upper-crust British they make your butler feel like an illegal Latino: Kenneth Branagh (as Major-General Tresckow), Bill Nighy (as General Olbricht), Tom Wilkinson (as General Fromm), Terence Stamp (as Ludwig Beck), Eddie Izzard (as General Fellgiebel), Kevin McNally (as Dr. Goerdeler). The German names won’t mean a thing unless you know the story – the joke is in the casting. It is why VALKYRIE stumbles conceptually, because it is always in the back of our minds, “No wonder they’re trying to assassinate Hitler – they’re BRITISH!”

Bad Guys are British, right? Staple of Hollywood. So casting them as Germans was no stretch, but director Singer ensures that the “good” Bad Guys (i.e. traitors) are all British actors and the “bad” Bad Guys (i.e. Nazis) are actual German actors.

Then there’s Tom. Fruiting about the authentic-looking WWII backdrop, in no way trying to inhabit the role of a one-handed, eye-patched, high-ranking German Chief of Staff. Just Being Cruise. The American accent is bad enough. (We give the filmmakers credit here for the artful way they suspended our disbelief in everyone speaking English: the opening titles are written in German, and morph into English, then we hear Cruise speaking German with English subtitles, cross-faded into him speaking English.) We get the point of the translation for our lazy Western ears, but there is more to a role than an accent; Cruise gives it nothing more than Cruise. We do not lose ourselves in this “German’s” conflict – committing the highest crimes known to man since Judas Iscariot. It’s Tom Cruise, eat your popcorn.

The two things foremost in my mind were Cruise’s ingenious bluescreen glove he’s obviously wearing, and how hard the Shakespearean vets on set must be laughing at his babyboy acting chops over lunch.

As a political thriller, VALKYRIE succeeds, though. Even with Tom just Being Cruise. Writers Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) and Nathan Alexander compress events and often just falsify events to keep it popcorn-friendly – this is not a historical document – but they do not lose too much in their streamlining because the story itself is just so entertaining. (To understand the extent of the operation, and its many complications that are not shown in VALKYRIE for brevity, one of the most authoritative sources is still William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

“Valkyrie” was the code-name for a plan that called for Germany’s Home Army (led by Thomas Kretschmann – he was the Euro boat captain in KONG 2005) to hold major German cities in case of a revolt from the millions of foreign laborers. Stauffenberg says, “I’ve rewritten Valkyrie” (which is ironic, considering the filmmakers re-wrote the events of Hitler’s assassination in VALKYRIE as well) – an idea which comes to Stauffenberg while listening to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries (somehow Singer squeezed it in).

The plan: to kill Hitler – with a good old-fashioned time-bomb (with no Roger Ebert Red Digital Readout!) – then report that SS radicals were trying to take over the cities, which would allow the conspirators to mobilize the Home Army to arrest all SS officials. This would nullify Hitler’s main Gestapo bulldog, Himmler.

It is a pleasure to see a modern movie that doesn’t use holo-computers, laser fields, cell phones or cockamamy technology so outlandish it might as well be magic. (I refrain from dropping the classic Arthur C. Clarke aphorism on you. Congratulate me. It’s harder than you think.)

Stauffenberg plants the bomb in a briefcase near Hitler during a staff meeting. It detonates, seemingly killing everyone in the room. The Home Army started its takeover of major cities, but just as Germany was about to become the United States of Tom Cruise – Hitler was discovered alive and made a public radio announcement to proclaim his survival was divine.

The conspirators failed by not controlling the flow of information. This was in a time when mass communications were in the form of telegrams sent to a central communications switchboard, then forwarded on. Though the conspirators had hundreds of high-ranking officers onboard Valkyrie, they failed to recruit the low-ranking message personnel. The telegram of Hitler’s death stunned these indoctrinated Nazis, but the following one about his survival made them smell that rotten something in Denmark (on accounta it’s so close to Germany…)

Just as the conspirators were saying, “I love it when a plan comes together,” the Home Army is re-claimed by the Nazis. As Stauffenberg’s orders go out over the wire to arrest SS officers, orders issue from the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s HQ) to arrest Stauffenberg. The wire operators chose to send on The Fuehrer’s orders and ignore Stauffenberg’s.

Stauffenberg’s plan had to work, so he made no effort to hide his tracks. He was discovered and executed within the 24-hour period when Valkyrie was launched on 20 July 1944. He was executed 21 July 1944.

Somewhere in Germany, there is a monument to Tom Cruise for his brave sacrifice. Or is it in Britain in the Risky Business Untrained Actor’s museum?…

END