Peanuts, popcorn and hotdogs. The seventh inning stretch. The sun beating down on fans withering under the scorching July heat.
What more epitomizes the classic American pastime? Perhaps going back to the days when the sport of baseball was, arguably, at its most controversial: the days of Jackie Robinson, the first major league African American baseball player.
Back to the days when fans dressed in their Sunday best for an outing to the stadium. Back when segregation ruled every action and every word spoken. Back to when true athletes became heroes to little boys watching from the sidelines.
These are the days the movie “42” takes us back with such accuracy, you begin to feel like a fan sitting in awe as you watch Robinson make play after play and perform steal after steal so smoothly you are sure you missed something.
The movie begins with a narration of Robinson’s earliest baseball career from a reporter known as Wendell Smith, played in a breakout role by Andre Holland, who describes the path Robinson took to arrive on the major league team, the Brooklyn Dodgers.
We then quickly transition to a nighttime game where Robinson, played in another breakout role by Chadwick Boseman, makes an impressive steal to third base. From here we learn that Robinson is the not the type of man to lay down to the dictates of society, especially not when it concerns where he is allowed to go to the bathroom. And this, we learn, is one of the reasons the Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey wants him as the future of his team.
Played by the classic Harrison Ford, Rickey, known as “Mr. Rickey” to those closest to him, is an old man who loves the game and believes winning games is more important than some unspoken social code against the color of a man’s skin. With the ever-present chewed up, half-smoked cigar in his hand and the gravel voice to go with the 50 years he has spent smoking them, he meets Robinson for the first time and warns him against fights over the antagonism he will receive.
“You want a player without the guts to fight back,” Robinson asks.
“No. I want a player with the guts not to fight back,” Mr. Rickey replies.
As the movie progresses the audience begins to understand the angst following Robinson at every turn as he strives to prove himself a worthy player in the major leagues.
Although the movie maintains its opportunities to bring the audience discomfort in its stinging boldness of the past of African Americans and even, at times, to red-faced anger toward Robinson’s struggles, it is a feel good movie the whole family can enjoy.
Directed by Brian Helgeland and claiming newcomers Holland, Boseman and Nicole Beharie alongside noted actors Harrison and Christopher Meloni, this movie rates three and a half out of five stars for its ability to keep the audience invested in Robinson’s life.
As for how it ends…only history will tell.