Stephen Hopkins’ account of track and field legend Jesse Owens and the controversy surrounding US participation in the Berlin Olympics of 1936 is overstuffed, muddy-headed, heavy-handed, derivative, and weirdly sanitized — and yet it almost works, because who wouldn’t thrill to see a black man take on Nazi ideology on the world stage? (It probably helps if you haven’t seen 1982’s Chariots of Fire, which shares an uncomfortable number of story beats and details: the runner taking on a hateful world, the outcast coach, the shortened stride, the crisis of conscience about whether to run, etc., etc.) Stephan James portrays Owens as a man whose demeanor is as sweet and yielding as his body is hard and powerful: how could anyone hate such a nice guy who’s so good at what he does? Yet hate they do, because racism. Happily, he gets support from a constantly drinking (but never drunk) Jason Sudeikis as his progressive-minded coach. (Meanwhile, Jeremy Irons and William Hurt square off in a boring Berlin boycott battle.) Despite the import of the competition, dramatic tension comes mostly from Barnaby Metschurat’s Joseph Goebbels, who dominates every scene he’s in as the Games’ director. (2016) — Matthew Lickona
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