Red-125
42 (2013) was written and directed by Brian Helgeland. It tells the story of Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player to play on a major league team.I grew up in Brooklyn, and we kids thought of the Dodgers almost as members of our family. I watched Jackie Robinson play in Ebbets Field many times. Chadwick Boseman, the actor who portrays Jackie Robinson, looks like Robinson, and has imitated his style on the base paths perfectly. This is the film to see if you want to know what the game of baseball looked like in the late 1940's into the mid 1950's. (Of course, it looked predominantly White, although other Black players soon followed Robinson into the majors.) Both Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, and Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson give solid acting performances. However, a movie like this rises or falls on the abilities of the star. Boseman has great abilities, and he makes the movie work.This is an excellent movie to watch with your children or grandchildren. They will find it hard to believe that African-Americans weren't allowed to play major league baseball. It's a great way to bring the segregated universe of the mid-20th Century to their attention. It's also a great way to show them that the right person, at the right time, can bring about a true change in society.P.S. We kids had no problem at all with a Black player on the Dodgers. All we cared about was winning the pennant and the World Series. We knew that Robinson could help the Dodgers win, and winning was what we wanted!
alindsay-al
I do enjoy biopic films and this film is all about Jackie Robinson who is the first black baseball player and how he struggled to succeed in this. To my delight this was a great movie that's hope becomes available to own in the UK. The premise sees a baseball manager want to win the world series so he wants to get the first black baseball player and the film documents the struggles that Jackie Robinson grows through to become a baseball player. Now Chadwick boseman plays Jackie Robinson and he does a great job in bringing this legend to life. He wasn't just a push over and you really felt sorry for him as he was put in these hard to watch scenarios. You really care about Jackie Robinson and you really want to cheer for him to succeed. But probably the best performance in this film is Harrison Ford as his manager and I think there should have been the conversation about whether he deserved an Oscar nomination. He was great and you really felt like he cared about this character and that he really cared about Jackie Robinson becoming a success and it really adds something to the film. Jackie Robinson's wife does a great job as well as all the players and coaches in the film as you truly feel the way Robinson does in all these interactions. The story is really good, it focuses on the most important part of Robinson's life and you truly feel like the baseball field is where he can thrive. There is allot of tension in this film obviously due to the time period and it really works and make you truly root for Jackie Robinson. The script is okay with some well done dramatic dialogue, however, when some of the scenes get heated I think more realistic dialogue and occasional swearing could have made the scene more volatile. The style is alright with the baseball scenes being really interesting and cool but I do think the film could have done with more baseball scenes and really emphasised that the baseball field is where Jackie Robinson thrives. If you are interested in this film at all then you should see it and I hope it comes to the UK so I can get it on blu Ray.
Psy33
The movie tells the tale of the breaking of the color barrier in baseball.But the movie also shows the racism of the times and what a big factor racism was in American culture and American sports culture at the time. The movie shows how hard it can be to do the right thing when everyone else is doing the wrong thing. This can be the case even if you are a talented baseball coach or the owner of a baseball team. But if you are on a baseball team in the 1940's or 50's and everyone else on the team is expressing racist views and they circulate a petition saying that they don't want any Negroe players on the team, what are you going to do?There is an excellent scene in the film where a father teaches his son how to be a racist at a baseball game.This movie is an excellent telling of the tale of what was required in order to break the color barrier in baseball.The casting is excellent. All of the actors do a good job.The movie has a very realistic tone to it.
George Wright
42 is a movie about one of the most important stories in professional baseball, the breaking of the racial barrier with the first black baseball player. Chapman Bosemann is an incredible lookalike for Jackie Robinson, third baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but his real strength is portraying the character of the man who sucked up his guts and persevered through the harassment, hate letters, and racial epithets that targeted him and aimed to break his spirit. We also get a view of his fellow team players who learnt to accept him and stand by him in his struggle. It was not unanimous. Some were reluctant; the great shortstop Pee Wee Reese, for example, who later became a great ally. Owner Branch Rickey, a religious man and a man with a strong social conscience, made it clear that he wanted total cooperation or the players would be bounced from the team. Rickey is played by actor Harrison Ford, who was so well made up to look like Rickey that it never struck me who really was the man under the mop of hair, professorial spectacles, bow tie and three piece suit. Christopher Meloni plays coach Leo Durocher, a man of steel who was relieved when Rickey assured him, that Robinson was not a nice guy. "Nice guys finish last", he said, repeating his now famous line. I heard about the difficulties Robinson had to face in his mission to be "the first black man in baseball." However, I had no idea of the racism and resentment he had to endure. It was an outstanding story and is well presented in this fine piece of movie making.
AD
