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Race | 2016 | PG-13 | - 2.3.4

The story of Jesse Owens and the lead up to his record breaking gold metal victories at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. He was confronted with segregation and racism stateside as well as Nazi notions of Aryan racial superiority in Germany. Also with Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis, Eli Goree, Shanice Banton, Carice van Houten, Jeremy Irons, William Hurt, David Kross, Shamier Anderson and Jonathan Higgins. Directed by Stephen Hopkins. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in German with translation and subtitles in English. [2:14]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A woman asks a man to dance in a club scene; the man refuses, at first saying he has a girl, but she pulls him by the arm and we see them dancing close together, she spins around and presses her back to his front, then dips down, then she holds him tightly and he puts his hands on her clothed buttocks. We see a man and a woman in hotel room (she lies on the bed fully clothed) and it is implied that they are sharing the room and sex is also implied.
 A man and a woman kiss several times in different scenes. A man tries to kiss a woman in a beauty salon; they move out onto the sidewalk where they kiss and hug before he leaves on a bus.
 A woman wearing a low-cut dress (cleavage is visible) sings and dances on stage in a club while men and women dance on the floor. A shirtless man walks through a house looking for his shirt (we see his bare chest, abdomen and back). Several partially dressed young men are in a couple of locker room scenes (we see their bare chest, abdomen and back).
 A man picks up a toddler off the floor of a beauty salon and says, "Come to Daddy"; we understand that he and a young woman have had a child together. An Olympic athlete talks about his government sending a woman to his room and that they wanted them to have sex and for her to become pregnant by him.

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A man slams another man against a wall and yells at him. A woman shoves a man, yells at him and speeds away in her car. A man jumps over a pole as a demonstration and falls on the ground (we do not see it, but we hear him hit the ground and grunt, and then see him in a bathtub soaking); we understand that he hurt his back. A man runs and jumps in a long jump pit and moans when he hits the ground (we see him using a cane later).
 German soldiers are shown throwing personal possessions out of the windows of homes and onto the streets, and then dragging people out of their homes and throwing them into the backs of trucks in several scenes.
 A woman yells at a man and tells him to leave her place of business. German soldiers confront a man and one yells at him repeatedly to show his papers.
 A large crowd of people gathered to watch a track meet boos an African-American as he takes his position on the track. Several scenes show white men tease and goad African-Americans and they call them names. Adolf Hitler and his commanders appear on a balcony and many people in a crowd salute him and chant.
 A man is told that the African-American couple in his company will have to use the service entrance to go into a hotel (this is Jesse Owens and his wife, who are at the hotel to attend a dinner in his honor). A woman sends a threatening telegram to a man after she sees a newspaper article about him with another woman. A man yells at a young man in a few scenes. People argue about an athlete. Many people protest outside a hotel where the Olympic committee is meeting to determine whether to boycott the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. We hear a radio broadcast of a man bad-mouthing the coach of a team that did not win a track meet. A remark and a joke are made about the skin color of people on a college track team. Signs that read, "Don't Buy from Jews," and "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" are seen in Germany. A political representative meets with an Olympic athlete and asks him not to participate in the games to send a message to Berlin. A man has several confrontations with another man and they become threatening. A man talks about crashing his airplane days before going to the Olympics to compete. We hear a radio broadcast of a boxer being knocked out in boxing match. A man tells another man that he wants to stick something "Up Hitler's [anatomical term deleted]." We hear that a man told another man that he was not fit to train fleas on a dog. A man points to an African-American man and calls him, "That." A man says of the German government, "My government is going insane." A man tells another man that he expects him to withdraw two Jewish athletes from the Olympics because that is what their German hosts want them to do. We read that the White House never publicly recognized Jesse Owens' successes at the '36 Olympics.
 We see many homeless people on the streets of Cleveland Ohio in the early 1930s. We see many people standing in a line outside a building (presumably a food or work line).
 A man is shown to have a scar on his chest and his mother talks about doctors having cut out a lump when he was young.

LANGUAGE 4 - 7 scatological terms, 7 anatomical terms, 16 mild obscenities, 8 derogatory terms for African-Americans, 1 derogatory term for whites, name-calling (big dope, old man, gorillas, nasty, hateful, idiot, ridiculous ), 5 religious profanities (GD), 4 religious exclamations (e.g. Jesus Christ, Ford God's Sake, God).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man drinks a shot of alcohol in his office, people are poured champagne at a luncheon (we do not see anyone drink), two men drink alcohol in a meeting room, many people drink alcohol in a room where they are listening to a boxing match on the radio, several young men hold bottles of beer (we do not see them drink, a man drinks beer from a bottle in his hotel room, a man drinks from a flask in a hotel room, and a man sits on bleachers and drinks alcohol from a bottle. A man smokes a cigarette in a meeting room, and a man smokes and is given a glass of cognac that he does not drink.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Berlin Olympics 1936, Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, racism, competitive sports, college sports, rumors, distractions, bribery, tyranny, NAACP, solidarity, Joe Lewis, spirit of sportsmanship.

MESSAGE - Racism is horrible thing.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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