42

What is it about baseball movies that they are almost always fantastic?  Baseball movies are perfectly suited to drama.  Well, the batting is.  Pitching can be pretty good, but fielding is boring.  That's why no good baseball movie focuses on defense (do you hear me "Angels in the Outfield?" We want angels at the plate!).  One man against the world who must (through hard work, innate talent, and sheer will) overcome the odds and come out on top.  This also the American Dream.  Americans are not team players.  Team movies lack drama.  Sorry football movies.

 

"42" is a great baseball movie.  It manages to expand past batting to base stealing.  The base stealing is riveting because it maintains drama.  The pitchers are all portrayed as hateful racists and Jackie Robinson's base stealing is played not as man vs. world but as hero vs. villain.  This movie has it all!

 

But why are the pitchers racist?  Well in case you are really out of the loop both historically and cinematically, "42" is about Jackie Robinson.  Robinson was the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball.  He broke the color barrier in professional sports and paved the way for non-white American athletes to play at the elite level.

 

So if "42" is a great baseball movie, is it a great race movie?  I say yes.  Many (most?) American movies dealing with race have the problem of focusing on white people.  It can come off rather condescending that racial issues are portrayed as a problem that white people have to fight for black people.  While "42" has plenty of white characters in it (remember that the whole point is that Robinson is the only black player), the focus of the film is Robinson and how racism affects him and how he overcomes it.  It is even presented that Robinson was brought onto the Brooklyn Dodgers not to make a statement, but as a publicity stunt to boost black attendance.  White people are not fighting Robinson's fight.  Robinson is the fighter.  And it is incredibly refreshing.

 

There are great performances all around in "42."  Chadwick Boseman is a phenomenal Jackie Robinson.  He is stoic and proud.  This quietude serves to make his outbursts of rage and frustration that much more powerful.  But the show stealer is Harrison Ford as Dodgers owner Branch Rickey.  It's so nice to see Ford actually care about a performance.  He's been grumpily shuffling through the last few roles he's had and I was frankly sick out it.  In "42," he gives an Oscar caliber performance. 

 

But the real stars of "42," the ones who make the whole thing work so well, are writer/director Brian Helgeland and composer Mark Isham.  Helgeland may not always direct the best movies but I always find his scripts to be pretty solid.  "42" is one of his best.  The direction is nothing to get excited about.  No flashy camerawork.  No weird editing.  Nothing to distract the audience from the story unfolding on screen.  And that's admirable.  The script is filled with diverse characters, not just racists and not racists.  There's just as much internal turmoil to balance out the external turmoil.  The script has plenty of comic relief to help take the edge off of the seriousness but it never undermines the subject matter (do you hear me "The Help?").  And the serious moments are driven by Mark Isham's rousing score.  The music is pure audience manipulation in best way.  The one-two punch of Helgeland and Isham make this a truly must-see movie.

 

"42" never falls into the studio trap of being a "black movie" or a "mainstream movie."  There are no "white movies" which implies a certain racism on Hollywood's part (are black people not mainstream?).  "42" is much like Robinson himself.  It defies color.  It is a movie for everyone.  And I would never claim that racism in America is gone or even in sports (google "racism in soccer"), but it's nice to see how far things have come and mindboggling to imagine what it once was like.  I think "42" is one of those movies that we'll all be watching decades from now.  It's a perfect blend of history, Americana, and great storytelling.  It's great cinema.

 

9 out of 10