MOVIE CLIP MANAGER MOVIE
MOVIE CLIP MANAGER FULL

It’s a rather remarkable performance by Ford in that he goes for it whole hog, scowling and barking and delivering sound bite-sized life lessons. Harrison Ford is all eyebrows and speeches as Branch Rickey, the Dodgers executive determined to break the color barrier.

When he gets the offer to sign with the Dodgers, he’s more excited about the pay increase than the historical implications.

We’re told Robinson was chosen over other major league-ready players (and future teammates) such as Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe because he wasn’t as “nice,” i.e., soft, and would be better equipped to deal with the hate and intolerance.

MOVIE CLIP MANAGER MOVIE

The real Rachel Robinson was also a hero, but in “42,” she’s portrayed as a near-saint, patiently counseling Jackie to hold his temper, and looking like a movie star as she quietly endures the morons in the stands behind her. Even the domestic scenes with the beautiful Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson paint an almost too-perfect picture. The Jackie Robinson of “42” is a high school history lesson, lacking in complexity and nuance.

MOVIE CLIP MANAGER FULL

To be sure, there are scenes of racist fans heckling Robinson and many of his own teammates signing a petition demanding Robinson not be allowed to join the Dodgers - but “42” falls short in giving us a full measure of the man himself. (As “42” reminds us, black Americans fought and died for their country in World War II - but they returned home to a country with separate drinking fountains and a ban on Negroes in the major leagues.) It’s a mostly unexceptional film about an exceptional man.īoseman is a fine actor, and he looks like a baseball player in the spring training and game-time sequences, but other than one bat-breaking meltdown that takes place out of sight of fans and teammates, we rarely get that visceral, punch-to-the-gut true feeling for the pressure Robinson surely must have felt when he took the field in 1947 as a pioneer. For this reason alone, “42” is a valuable film - a long overdue, serious big-screen biopic about one of the most important American pioneers of the 20th century.īut this is more a ground-rule double than a grand slam.Īs written and directed by Brian Helgeland, “42” is competent, occasionally rousing and historically respectful - but it rarely rises above standard, old-fashioned biography fare.

That this all happened in 1947 - history recent enough there are people around who remember it - might come as shocking news to younger generations who know little about Jackie Robinson other than that his number 42 being universally retired because he broke baseball’s shameful color barrier. The sliding moral scale of major league baseball at the time was such that Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher was suspended for an entire season for having an affair with a married actress - but Chapman was just told to knock it off with the racist taunts and to pose for a publicity photo with Robinson. Before that, as an All-Star outfielder with the Yankees, Chapman reportedly taunted Jewish fans with anti-Semitic slurs and the Nazi salute. (Sadly, the Chapman character wasn’t the least bit fictionalized. It’s a tough scene to sit through, with the likable character actor Alan Tudyk bravely portraying this real-life embodiment of pure, ignorant, racist hate, and Chadwick Boseman doing equally fine work as a the fiery, intense Robinson, who must perform with the weight of instant history on his shoulders - while racists such as Chapman (and some of Jackie’s own teammates) are hectoring him every step of the way.

Movie clip manager