Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity and unpalatable language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.12.13
42 is an unabashed valentine to
baseball great Jackie Robinson: an old-style film laden with the sort of calculated
sentimentality that Frank Capra delivered back in the day.
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| Relying on the split-second timing and sprinting ability that have made him a sensational — and crowd-pleasing — base-stealer, Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman, left) delights in messing with the minds of pitchers who, after a few rounds of this, sometimes lose their cool completely. |
The pacing is leisurely and graceful,
with unhurried takes granting us time to absorb the story and appreciate the
performances. Writer/director Brian Helgeland and editors Peter McNulty and
Kevin Stitt avoid the staccato pacing and smash-cuts that have become a 21st
century norm, preferring instead to let events unfold in a manner that reflects
the poetry of baseball itself.
Honestly, I found it quite
refreshing.
Although Helgeland has taken
pains to be faithful to the firestorm that erupted in 1947, when Robinson
became the first player to break Major League Baseball’s infamous color line,
the approach here is — at the risk of unintended irony — acutely black and
white. All the positive (i.e. progressive) historical figures are extraordinarily
virtuous, their memories honored here by behavior that is, for the most part,
nothing short of saintly.
The racist crackers, on the other
hand, are one-dimensional and mostly anonymous: a redneck sheriff here, a
small-town gaggle of thugs there. The one exception, almost startling in a film
that until this point has (rather unrealistically) avoided much blatantly
racist language, comes from Alan Tudyk’s portrayal of Philadelphia Phillies
manager Ben Chapman. No doubt Helgeland felt safe with this choice of highly
visible villain, since by all accounts the actual Chapman’s on-field behavior
was even worse than what we witness here.
But that’s getting ahead of
things.
Although characters too good to
be true often don’t work in our increasingly cynical age, this film gets its
crucial dramatic juice from the sublime lead performance by Chadwick Boseman,
an actor, playwright and stage director whose screen work thus far has been
confined mostly to TV shows such as Lincoln Heights and Persons Unknown. I
suspect that’s about to change, because Boseman never puts a foot wrong here.
It’s difficult to convey the
mesmerizing, deeply stirring lightning in a bottle that emanates from a
genuinely inspirational person: the breathtaking whoosh that erupts when a
truly electrifying individual strides through a door and sucks all the air out
of a room. We feel it in the presence of a gifted politician or preacher, or
when a commanding actor takes the stage during a live theatrical performance.
Boseman has that sort of
presence, and Helgeland coaxes truly fine and sensitive work from this young
actor. Boseman’s line readings are heartfelt and well timed, but that’s only
part of it; he carries himself in a manner that suggests the brave
self-assurance that Robinson himself must have displayed, every waking minute
during this tempestuous point in his career.
In a nutshell, Boseman’s
performance is inspirational in the same way that Robinson himself must have stirred
so many people, back in 1947.
