42
Opens Friday at International Village
Sports is the great equalizer: athleticism levels the playing field, breaking down barriers of race, language and status more quickly than anything else can.
Writer-director Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) explores the issue with his feel-good biopic of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American admitted into Major League Baseball.
But there would be no Jackie Robinson without Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers and founder of the farm-team system. Rickey didn't see black and white but green, as in the money he'd make by integrating African-American players into his league.
Signing a black man isn't against the law, after all. But "you break a law, some people think you're smart - you break a code and you're an outcast," cautions Rickey's assistant (T.R. Knight).
After a search, Rickey signs 26-year-old Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) to the Montreal Royals farm team, prepping him for the abuse and fallout to come. Robinson earns $600 a month, plus a $3,500 signing bonus.
Ford expects two things from Robinson: that he be a "fine gentleman" and a "great baseball player." Robinson manages to do both along the road to the Dodgers, though the barbs on the field become more menacing, the team is denied lodging at hotels, and bigoted local lawmen eject Robinson from the field. Rickey has a filing cabinet full of threatening letters to Robinson, his wife (Nicole Beharie) and his family.
Helping with the transition is Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), the reporter assigned to Robinson's care, who acts as spin doctor, protector and chauffer to the star player.
Robinson's team members stage a revolt, circulate a petition and incur the wrath of team manager Leo Durocher (Christopher Leoni), later banned from the game for a year for having an affair with a married woman. (Ah, how sport has changed!)
Even after Robinson makes the team, his teammates stand apart, and right up until the Dodgers race for the pennant, Robinson showers separately. Racial epithets from the crowd stir some sympathy among teammates, but it's a lengthy racist rant from Phillies coach Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) that finally pushes the men toward unity, led by shortstop Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black), in the film's most touching scene.
They called Joe DiMaggio a "wop" and Hank Greenberg a "kike," reasons Chapman, and his vitriol towards Robinson was nothing but "trial by fire." But the fact that we don't even spell out the N-word in print today attests to its potency, then and now.
This isn't the first time that Boseman has played a star athelete: he played football great Floyd Little in the 2008 movie The Express, and plays the restrained, family-man version of Robinson warmly here. Ford is unevenly convincing, though it is nice to see him break out of his customary harried agent/president/treasure-hunter on the run roles.
Sports movies have to strike the right balance between the action on the field and the drama off of it, and in 42's case a little more action in the diamond and one less heart-to-heart would've added tension where there is none, despite those cabinets full of death threats and discord among the players. And the road from ignorance to acceptance seems a little too smooth. But overall Helgeland does a fine job of harkening back to the time when radio was king, when even the owner had to wait for a phonecall to see how his team did.
Robinson won the day, in the end, earning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1947 and opening up a world for a whole segment of the community who felt a little more liberated every time Robinson stepped up to the plate.
