He was the great American hope, the first African American boxer to fight for the title in nearly thirty years. He was charismatic and strong, a hero to an entire race of people before he became a hero to a country. He served his country in wartime. He fought Adolf Hitler´s chosen boxer twice. He cavorted with numerous women. He was the first black golfer in a Professional Golfing Association event. He broke down walls and then faded into obscurity thanks to the same country he served. His name? Joe Louis.
Leave it to HBO Sports to showcase the boxer born Joe Louis Barrowman. After all, this is the premium cable channel which brought us the harrowing "Sand and Sorrow," the simultaneously hopeful and heartbreaking "Coma" and a plethora of other documentaries meant to shed light on an overlooked aspect of our lives. The public knows the name Joe Louis. Perhaps from Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, home of the Red Wings. Maybe they know him from his epic fight against German Max Schmelling in 1938 (avenging his first loss-to Schmelling-two year earlier). What "Joe Louis: America´s Hero…Betrayed" does, though, is provide a comprehensive history of the fighter, from the first bout in 1934 through his tragic death in 1981.
The lions share of the emphasis is placed on Louis´s impact on the African American community, as it should be. Using stock footage of fights and press conferences, still photos and current interviews, HBO Sports provides as comprehensive a look as it can at the man and the myth. To hear poet Maya Angelou wax on about the way people responded to Louis is a wonder to behold. Consider this: Louis was given a set of rules to live by, owing to the race riots following the last black heavyweight champion of the world claiming the belt. For instance, he could not raise his arms in victory on a white opponent or have a picture taken with a white woman.
What may come as a shock to most people is the overt racism leveled at Louis, outside of the rules imposed on him. Sports writers used different adjectives to describe his race. They go by in newspaper clippings, probably the docs funniest moment (for the sheer number of nicknames, not the actual names). Among them: the Brown Bomber, Dark Destroyer, Black Lightning, Sepia Socker, Chocolate Soldier…you get the point. These are newspaper men finding a way to integrate latent racism into their supposedly objective stories.
Against the backdrop of segregation and the looming World War II, listening to accounts of communities hanging out their windows for a small sliver of radio coverage…to understand what this singular man meant to so many people across the country. There is a palpable sense of history unfolding before our eyes when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Bill Cosby, among others, revel in Louis. An added layer comes in the form of Jimmy Carter as he recounts his father allowing black neighbors to listen to the broadcast. Louis, it turns out, wasn´t just a hero for his community. He became a hero for the entire country.
If there can be one criticism of the doc it is this: with the vast resources of HBO Sports and its parent company (and even Time Warner), the usual parade of sports personalities are left on the sidelines. Where is Bob Costas or Ahmad Rashad or Stuart Scott or Bryant Gumbel? It is absolutely important to have writers from the time recount their memories of Louis, but there is a stark dividing line between the interviewees. The writers are, nearly to a man, white while everyone else is black. There is no need to have this dividing line. You can bet in a doc on Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, all of these people would be put in front of the camera. And since it can be successfully argued that Louis is important than either of those men in the greater social context, I felt strangely let down in the end.
"America´s Hero…Betrayed" is a bit of a misnomer, a marketing gimmick, if you will. Should one man skirting the law (tax law, for the record) be swept under the rug because of who he is? Not really, since justice is blind and must be applied to all people in the same exact way. What the doc wants to do-with the help almost all the interviewees-is portray Joe as a man caught in circumstances when, in fact, they were his own doing. Being linked to various high-profile stars like Lena Horne. Finding himself involved with shady and downright criminal people. At some point, Louis had to know something was going to bite him. It finally did, obviously, and we´re supposed to feel bad for him?
Granted, watching the former great get brutally knocked out in his final fight with Rocky Marciano in 1951 is heartbreaking. We know the outcome but hope-somehow-it is different just this once. Not only because he racked up a professional record of 69-3, but because of what he meant to an entire generation. None of this excuses skirting the law, mind you. Somehow, though, without it being said, everyone believes he should have been let off the hook. Fair? You decide.
VIDEO:
Standard anamorphic widescreen without any major surprises. Old content looks…well, old. New content is vastly better. I was a bit surprised, to tell the truth, with how good the archival video appears. Yes, it shows the ravages of age with black pops, lines and a distinct lack of definition. Yet it is still absolutely watchable, considering it´s between 40 and 60 years old. The rest looks like typical HBO documentary video: crisp, slightly too much contrast, speakers against (generally) dark backgrounds. Those black levels are solid without any notable problems.
AUDIO:
No shock here, either. English 2.0 mix (Spanish 2.0 is also included) is what we´re given. The track is free of any distortion, except where appropriate-as in the old footage. There´s not a lot of reason or interest in directional sound effects; rather, the center speaker carries the burden. It´s a non-theatrical documentary soundtrack. No subtitles are included.
EXTRAS:
Aside from twelve chapter stops and the amaray case, nothing.
PARTING JABS:
Either due to a 75-minute running time or the need to provide only a barebones outline of his life, "Joe Louis: America´s Hero…Betrayed" barely manages to introduce the characters in one event before moving on to another. As such, this feels more like the Cliff´s Notes version of history than an actual historical document. Pity, too. He deserves more.