42

I feel as if I have been waiting my entire life for a Jackie Robinson biopic. As a baseball lover, and as someone who follows civil rights battles closely, Jackie Robinson has long been a hero of mine. It is impossible for me to view this film without any of that swirling around in my head. It would be tough for me not to, at the very least, appreciate this film for what it was trying to do. Until I saw the trailer for this movie only 2 trailers had ever made me tear up: United 93 and The Pursuit of Happyness. I can now add 42 to that very short list. Anytime people say sports do not matter, I want to scream at them to look up Jackie Robinson. Change happens slowly, but someone has to be first and Robinson was first. Robinson broke barriers and allowed for change to begin. Of course, he could not have done it without the gutsy, progressive ideas of Branch Rickey. That was actually the part of the film I was most interested in because what gets lost in much of the Jackie Robinson conversation was the move by Rickey to find the right person to break the color barrier. He knew the player not only had to be talented, but cool under pressure. For anyone who thinks this film is just about the legend of Robinson and that it is old or out of place, allow me to connect it to our contemporary world. Some day soon, I hope, one of the major male team sporting leagues will have the very first openly gay player. One day, perhaps, there will be a film made about him and we will all get to witness history being made. Rumors are swirling that there are 3 or 4 NFL players who might take that leap forward this year. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to be the first openly gay football player. In that aspect, 42 is incredibly relevant and continues to be.

In 1945 Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) has the wild idea to integrate a black player into Major League Baseball. He is the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that just does not have what it takes to win the pennant. He and his advisers scour the profiles of African American players looking for the right one. Sachel Page is the first name brought up, but Rickey wants someone who has a long career ahead of him. Rickey understands this decision could change the entire landscape of America. Eventually the name Jackie Robinson is brought up. Robinson is a tremendous ball player and military veteran. There is a problem though, he is a bit of a hot head. he has an attitude that scares people. Rickey decides he is the right man for the tremendous task of ushering in a new era of baseball and possibly America. Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) does not fully understand what is being asked of him at first, but when Rickey explain to him that the first black player has to remain calm and not fight back, and that not fighting back would be true strength, Robinson just says, "Give me a glove, and a number on my back and I will show you the guts." The rest of the film centers on his only year in the minor leagues and his first year in the major league. He is booed everywhere, called the most awful names, and even gets baseballs thrown at his head by opposing pitchers who resent him integrating baseball. He has to just take everything thrown at him. Luckily for him, he is an incredible baseball player who lets his bat, his glove and especially his legs do the talking for him. It is so tough for Robinson that one point his teammates all sign a petition saying they refuse to play with a black man. Not only does Robinson have to worry about the hatred from the crowd and the other teams, his own teammates loathe him, even as he is helping them win. All Jackie has is his owner, a black reporter who wants to help Jackie succeed and Jackie has his wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie). Jackie and Rachel have a tender, loving, strong relationship and he often looks to her to ground him and calm him down.

Written, directed, shot, edited, and acted like a classic old Hollywood movie, 42 succeeds on every level, if it does come off a bit formulaic. Brian Helgeland wrote the screenplay and directed the film and clearly holds the story in great reverence. The baseball scenes are expertly executed and paced. Often times in baseball movies, the camera never quite catches the action in a fluid or logical way, but here, the swooping cameras effortlessly catch the pitcher/hitter dynamic and do an even better job of capturing Robinson's speed on the base paths. I loved how well they rendered the old baseball stadiums and how perfect the costumes, sets and props looked. The old style uniforms and especially the gloves all give you a very real feeling of being in the late 1940s. I felt transported back to the era and I think that is important to establish very early on. This is a story that requires care and love because it has to show us an ugly side of our country and it is tough for us to see. By making sure we can feel a part of the 1940s, it opens us up to see our own history. Helgeland has won one Oscar and been nominated for another for his screenplays, so the man knows how to write a successful screenplay and this is no different. Not only does the arc of Jackie's character have the rises and falls you want to see in a character, there are 6 or 7 characters that have these great character moments that fit like a jigsaw puzzle into Jackie's story. It never feels tired or boring, which happens to many biopics, and I think by only focusing on two years of Robinson's life, Helgeland does us all a great service. We get an exceptional idea of who Jackie Robinson was without needing his entire life story.

Of course, a screenplay alone does not make a great movie. Embodying heroes is not easy. Imagine the pressure of playing a national hero, a man who means so much to so many people. Can you imagine how difficult that must be for anyone, let alone an actor with whom not many people are familiar? Well Chadwick Boseman is clearly up to the challenge. Played with blazing intensity, heart breaking vulnerability, and an abundance charisma, Boseman's Robinson soars. The man can say so much with just his face, which is good because Robinson was not able to talk back to all of the people saying nasty, vile things. Boseman has to say what he is thinking with a look, or a twitch. Robinson only loses it one time in the whole movie and that is in the hallway to the locker room and because he has it bottled up the entire movie, that moment is as powerful as possible. Even in that moment though, everything is small, tight, contained. Boseman could easily be nominated for an Oscar for this, but this performance is beyond awards. He manages to give people like me who have only ever seen Robinson footage look like history, a chance to see Robinson like we were really in the 1940s. I was awestruck the first time he was on base and I got to see those famous Robinson legs shuffle and twitch like he had ADD. I loved watching Robinson take that famous swing and jack home runs. Everything Boseman did just felt right. It was a chance for me to see one of my heroes on the big screen and Boseman did not disappoint. He found the humanity in a legend which is not always easy to do. Also, Harrison Ford's Rickey might have been a little cartoonish with his super gruff voice, and cigar chomping, but it worked for me. Ford has never been a great actor, but he completely threw himself into this role. As I said earlier, I was curious about this character and the film gave me exactly what I wanted from him. Ford makes him strong and intelligent and there were many moments I forgot I was watching one of the most recognizable stars in movie history.

I was moved to tears multiple times, for heart warming reasons and out of shame for what our country was like. The biggest scene in the movie is also the best scene and the most vile scene and it reduced me to a mess. Playing against the Phillies, Robinson comes up to the plate for the first time only to be met with the nastiest most vile string of words possible. Phillies manager, Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) vocalizes the kind of nastiness that so many have thought and that so many have wanted to say to Robinson, and he gets in Robinson's head. Tudyk does an amazing job portraying the most hardcore racist in the film. Watching him tear into Robinson and watching Robinson have to just take it, turned out to be the hardest thing to watch. It also turned to be a turning point for the movie. It showed humanity in Robinson, and showed vulnerability in him. It gave a direct face to the vile nasty racism. It gave us the fear of white America in the late 1940s. It is one of the hardest scenes of any movie that does not include physical violence. Based solely on the words, I was cringing and wanted to hide. It shows the power of words and they had to find the right actor to play that part, and Tudyk was clearly the right guy. By all accounts Chapman was a funny former player and not a vicious villain. Tudyk plays him as a guy who is trying to get laughs from other people, not as a straight villain. It adds texture to the scene and while the scene goes on and on, it needs to. It does not feel out of place or overly long. It is exactly how it is supposed to be.

42 delivers on everything I had hoped it would. It is a straight forward film with amazing performances that tells an amazing story. I was waiting the entire movie for the moment Pee-Wee Reese put his arm around Robinson on the field and when that moment came, all I could do was weep. Reese was the marquee player on the Dodgers at the time and that is what it took for people to realize that Robinson was a man, just like us. This movie takes us on a journey through a very specific moment of American History and shows us the importance of it without feeling overly preachy. I think that is what I admired most. It knew it was telling us the story of a legend, but never felt the need to beat us over the head with the importance, at least in my opinion. 42 takes us back to a time when baseball really was the National Pastime. It approaches the game with reverence and it treats the subject matter honestly. It gives us the man behind the legend and just how much he had to go through to get to the place where he is as celebrated as he is. I am sure if this film were rated R it could have delved even deeper into the racism, but honestly, I felt it was brutally honest without needing to rely too heavily on the awfulness. We got enough of it to understand. Besides, having a pitcher throw a fastball at your head because you are black does as good of a job of showing racism as any language could do. If you have any passing interest in America or baseball, please get out and see this movie. It will most likely end up in my top 10 for so many reasons, but mostly because it is that great of a movie.