42 REVIEW

About The Movie:

The film tells the story of Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) and, under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), Robinson's signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers to become the first African-American player to break the baseball color barrier. The story focuses mostly on the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers season and somewhat on the 1946 season with theMontreal Royals. Jackie Robinson and his team stop by a gas station. Robinson is refused entry to the washroom but the team says they'll find another gas station so the attendant allows Robinson to use it. As Robinson comes out, a scout for the Dodgers approaches him and sends him to Brooklyn. He is offered a $600 contract and $3,500 signing bonus which Robinson accepts but he is told to control his temper if he wants to play. Robinson proposes to his girlfriend by phone. She accepts.

During Dodgers spring training, Robinson successfully makes it to the franchise farm team in Montreal. After a great season there and spring training in Panama, he advances to the Dodgers. Most of the team soon signs a petition stating they refuse to play with Robinson, but manager Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni) insists the rookie will play for his team. Durocher is then suspended over an affair with a celebrity, leaving the Dodgers without a manager.

In a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, manager Ben Chapman taunts Robinson, causing him to go back to the dugout and smash his bat. He then returns to the field and hits a single, steals second and third base, and scores the winning run. When Chapman is later asked if he wants to show the world that he has "changed" his attitude towards Jackie, he requests to pose with Robinson for newspapers and magazine photos.

Robinson's home run against a Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who had earlier hit him in the head helps clinch the National League pennant for the Dodgers, sending them to the World Series, where they would lose in seven games to the New York Yankees.

What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:

These days, there are many less flattering things you could say about a movie than that it's enjoyable, uncomplicated and stirringly old-fashioned. The film depicts Robinson, played by the dazzling, little-known actor Chadwick Boseman, as a fearless, noble athlete-crusader — which, of course, is just what he was, though 42 scarcely spends three minutes trying to find any flaws in him (surely he must have had one), or even giving him a sprinkle of idiosyncrasy.

This movie feels very contemporary. When Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, spearheading the civil rights era before it had a name, he was subjected, on and off the field, to a degree of racial antagonism that could almost be called terrorism. For all its wholesomely uplifting, message-movie design, 42 makes that struggle look every bit as brutal and scary as it was. Robinson's fellow Dodgers, many of them Southern boys, welcome him to the team by signing a petition to have him kicked off. He's booed from the stands, pitchers take open delight in beaning him, and in one scene, when he's up at bat, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies (Alan Tudyk) heckles him from the sidelines by calling him the N-word for five unrelenting minutes. The way that scene goes on and on is scathingly powerful, as Jackie can barely keep himself from coming apart. Boseman, a graceful and handsome actor with a deep inner fire, gives Robinson a stare that's penetrating and guarded at the same time. A lot of the film's drama is reading that face — the intelligence and masked outrage. Jackie isn't allowed to fight back against any of the viciousness (if he did, it would look to mainstream America like he was the troublemaker), yet swallowing it eats up his spirit. How does he cope?

By playing the hell out of the game. Even if he hadn't been baseball's trailblazing crossover star, Robinson had a talent on the field that was explosive. He was a wizard at stealing bases, and the movie glories in his quickness and bravado — how he steps off first base and eases down the path, hopping back and forth like a jackrabbit on a hot stove, holding his arms low, letting his fingers wiggle like nervous antennae. 42 portrays this athletic showmanship with an element of racial psychodrama. Robinson isn't just teasing the pitchers (the more they look at him, the less they can tell what he's going to do next). He's mocking them, working off his anger. He triumphs, and holds on to his sanity, by beating racist players at their own game.

The movie covers just three years of Robinson's life, beginning in 1945, when he's a World War II veteran playing in the Negro Leagues and gets recruited by the forward-thinking Dodgers general manager, Branch Rickey, to join his minor-league club, the Montreal Royals. As Rickey, a stogie-chomping grump with a heart of gold, Harrison Ford seems to have reinvented himself as an actor. He gives an ingeniously stylized cartoon performance, his eyes atwinkle, his mouth a rubbery grin, his voice all wily Southern music, though with that growl of Fordian anger just beneath it. Calling Robinson into his office, he tells him that he needs a player who doesn't so much have the guts to fight back as the guts not to fight back. 42 is a rousing tribute to how impossible, and therefore heroic, a stance that was.

Overall Grade: A-