For those of you who don't know (i.e. you were cryogenically frozen for the past sixty years) , Jackie Robinson was the first black man to ever play in baseball's major league. One of the best to ever play the game, Robinson became the catalyst for the diversification of America's pastime, serving as a hero to a whole new generation of black sport stars who would change the landscape of sports to what we know today. Robinson's struggle to be seen as an equal in a league that didn't want him , seemed to me to be fodder for a guaranteed home run (yes the baseball puns will be abound in this one), and I came into the theatre not questioning whether it would be good, but great.
Right off the bat, something about the presentation of the movie seemed a little off. Biopics tend to be all over the place in terms of how they introduce their subjects, and at what part in their lives we find them. Unfortunately, the way the beginning of 42 is handled, it felt more like I was watching a Ken Burns PBS Special on the Jackie Robinson Era. While the background on the era was appreciated, it seemed to take away the majesty that one often finds so often in baseball movies. In the following scene we we're taken to the pivotal moment where Dodgers owner Branch Rickley decides he wants to sign a black baseball player. Not only are the acted reactions to this announcement worthy of a middle school christmas program, but surely the screenwriter could have included a lot of the background information from the beginning in the dialogue. I wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure Rickley's staff had more to say than a muffled "you can't do that". I mean at least try something like "you can't do that, there's never been a negro in the major league... that's why we have the negro league". Boom. In thirty seconds worth of effort, the writing could have been that much better, and an out of place opening sequence need not have been shot at all.
Thankfully, the storytelling seems to go a lot better. The fact that much of 42 takes place when Jackie is signed to the Dodgers' feeder team and works his way up turns out to be a brilliant move, as it gives us time to get to know the central characters before some of Jackie's biggest trials are met. Harrison Ford is expectedly good as Rickley, although I don't think he is ever given enough material to really satisfy his justification for wanting to sign a black player in the first place. The acting by Chadwick Boseman as Robinson is sturdy, but by no means anything to contact the annals of history about. He is certainly no Jamie Foxx in Ray, or Sean Penn in Milk, but that's ok, because that's not the sort of movie 42 is.
42 is not daring or particularly life-changing, but it's not mediocre or irreverent either. In fact, I think it's only real problem as a movie is that it is perhaps a bit too focused on being accurate without using some of the historical tools at its disposal. Directors have long used the sanctity of America's pastime to produce philosophical forays into the American experience and there is perhaps no better launch pad to talk about the evolution of race-relations in the States than the story of Jackie Robinson. 42 never shies away from this, and does a fair job of showing some of what Robinson had to deal with, but it fails to drape its hero in the godlike fashion that we expect from great baseball movies and that he deserves. In fictional characters like Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez (The Sandlot) to Roy Hobbs (The Natural), we're given a myriad of figures who are rather human and commit godlike deeds as we watch in awe. Somehow, 42 has managed to take an extraordinary man who commands respect like a deity in his sport, and made his accomplishments seem somehow less awe-inspiring, even though both your natural knowledge of the subject and the context of the film repeatedly tell you otherwise.
Baseball, in a classic sense, is all about the mythology, the superstition, the fear of being struck out and gunning for a homer all the same. But 42 seems to miss these elements, and in the end a promising hit turns out to be just another pop-fly, caught and quickly forgotten; everything that Jackie Robinson and his legacy are not.
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