Film Review: 42

More Than Just a Number in the Box Score

At the end of this year, New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera will hang up his cleats and retire as the game’s best closer. He will also retire the “42” on his back, the last current Major League baseball player to still wear Jackie Robinson’s number after it was retired throughout all of baseball back in 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of Robinson’s first professional game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Forever immortalized in the landscape of sports, Robinson’s status as a baseball legend reaches far beyond his play between the white lines, breaking a color barrier in a game rooted in unwritten rules and codes. Now nearly seventy years after his fateful walk to the batter’s box, Robinson is recognized each year on April 15^th, his number stitched on every player’s jersey.

42, directed by Brian Helgeland, does not capture the far-reaching effects and totality of Robinson’s career, neither his time in UCLA nor the majority of his successful stint with the Dodgers. Instead it dwells within his two-year height of adversity, the front lines of racial intolerance and the man who led the charge into breaking the color barrier. Bookended by archival footage of civil rights struggles and facts about Jackie’s life, the film begins in 1945 when young Robinson, performed earnestly by Chadwick Boseman, is playing in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. The twiddling fingers, the hopping off first base, and the climactic feet first safe slide into second are documented here. We must first meet Jackie as a baseball player before he realizes he’s playing for much more.

The proceeding play he steals home and it’s clear he’s bound for greater things. That’s where Branch Rickey (A phenomenal Harrison Ford) steps in and decides Jackie will be the first player he will attempt to integrate into the Brooklyn Dodger organization. Jackie tries out and makes the Dodger triple-A team in Montreal amidst spring training Floridians and teammates unwilling to accept a black man in their sacred sport. Rickey knows the hardships will follow and makes it clear that Robinson must have the guts “not” to fight back. He even makes sure a black reporter, Wendell Smith, who typewrites from the bleachers, looks out for Jackie in precarious situations. When he’s called up to Brooklyn another prejudiced storm awaits him.

Besides the bigoted fans, his teammates don’t take kindly to his presence, even forming a petition not to play with him on the team. Rickey calls manager Leo Durocher (an underused Christopher Meloni)– he’s always on the phone in the film—and tells him to knock sense into the team. “More are coming,” Durocher tells his team referring to African American players. “Jackie’s just the first.” Branch Rickey knew the burden he had in bringing in Robinson, but he also knew he had to be the right baseball player. Anyone less than a humble star would have inflicted a mutiny. Winning was the ticket. Winning changes everything. Winning helped an intolerant team see Robinson as more than a black man. Winning gave hope and cause for an African American population to see Robinson as a hero.

Every hit, every slide, every shoulder shrug, every knowing glare towards an unjust umpire built his confidence in an era where helmets weren’t instituted and getting hit in the head was a strong likelihood. Jackie’s wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie) plays his emotional rock, present at every home game suffering along with every fan’s jab, triumphing with every hit. Helgeland has experience in these stories, the height of which came most notably in “A Knight’s Tale,” in which a peasant played by Heath Ledger unlawfully enters a jousting competition, a sport of nobility. Historical anachronisms aside, he conjured the same kinds of highly emotional brotherhood relationships seen in 42. Robinson gave his teammates a chance to display their changed racial attitudes to their intolerant friends during their numerous road trips. Before a game in Cincinnati, Pee-Wee Reese races across the field and puts his arm around Jackie for the whole world to see.

Rickey was a rare man able to see an inevitable future taking shape while still desiring America’s pastime to be played with the same integrity. Harrison Ford is perfect for this role and congeals nicely into a character that constantly lights a stogie and recites religious rhetoric like “God’s a Methodist.” You forget that this man, with his slow tongue and gait, played Indiana Jones, but quickly remember again when he lights up his big smile, specifically as he hears Red Barber’s (John C. MicGinley) voice over an empty Ebbets Field, pronouncing Robinson’s pennant-winning performance in Pittsburgh.

This is ultimately a baseball movie, which means certain facets of the game must be shown, namely home runs being cracked with regularity, clunky broadcasting quips, and CGI baseballs to match a CGI stadium re-creation. That doesn’t necessarily mean some of those moments aren’t potent, but they’re noticeable, isolated staples of the game and films about the game. There is something for everyone, specifically the younger generation, which is the ultimate mission for a biopic like this, but that means it also leaves out scrupulous detail, which for stat heavy baseball nerds is a criminal offense.

But baseball films rarely ever capture the perfect nature of baseball, a sport predicated upon imperfection. Robinson rarely is shown to struggle in his at-bats except for one crucial game against the Phillies in which Philadelphia manager Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) tosses just about every racial epithet into Jackie’s ear in the batter’s box. Boseman’s personality is rather tame as Robinson, but his one moment of rage comes after Chapman’s insults.

Robinson sprints into the dugout tunnel, and, away from his teammates, saws a bat in two against the concrete wall. He thinks no one is watching, but then Rickey appears from the shadows, ready to embrace a belittled man. “Why did you do this?” Jackie asks him later, to which Rickey responds, “I want to see baseball played at its best.” It’s fair to say Robinson fulfilled his wish in multiple ways.

4/5

Cowboys and Aliens Review: An Intergalactic Western Showdown

The opening scenes in Cowboys and Aliens are maybe the slowest action-wise in the entire movie. They would be perfectly acceptable in a 1970s rodeo flick, one that has a desert whistling score and some deputy-bandit dialogue. But this movie is called Cowboys and Aliens, and after a while, the formalities of the Main Street broo-ha begin to beckon for an extra-terrestrial pickup.

To his credit, Jon Favreau, the director of this western/ sci-fi blockbuster, needed some foundation for his film to take flight. Part of this process meant convincing enough people, and maybe even himself, that Daniel Craig, the acclaimed british spy could put on a Dr. Jones cap, rub some sweat off his brow, and sound like a regular southwest shooter. The gamble pays off. He does keep Mr. Bond’s fighting tactics however, but they’re noticeably dynamic, especially after 3 whiskeys at the local tavern. He mounts his stolen horse, puts on the spurs, and giddyups into town clearly a force not to reckoned with.

Craig plays Jake Lonergan, who wakes up in the desert with Jason Bourne like amnesia but still possessing an unbeatable punch. He has a strange gash in his side and an impenetrable, mysterious metal bracelet up his wrist and decides to ride into town to patch his wound and his memory. It’s there he finds himself an outlaw as well as a town supplemented with typical character clichés. Theres the weapon smart preacher (Clancy Brown), the passive doctor (Sam Rockwell), a guilt-free gun slinger (Paul Dano), and his cattle rancher father, the town’s lone financier and step father to an adopted Indian, played by Harrison Ford. And instead of a small asian kid yelling Doctah Jones, its a shy deputy’s son (Noah Wringer) who looks to Ford for manhood.

Then of course there is Olivia Wilde, one of only two main women in the entire film, who plays Ella Swenson, someone completely entranced by outlaw Jake and his inability to remember. Then spaceships dive toward the earth, rocketing blue lasers and fiery explosions upon the vulnerable wooden town. The space crafts scorch the dirt and in the process use whip-like rope to snatch people from the ground and up into the sky. Ella seems to be a bit less scared than her fellow towners, somewhat out of place like her pristine groomed features amidst the dusty rubble. Her look is attractive and seductive, but like many of the minor characters is too clean cut for the grit of the 1870s.

What happens next is almost too predictable. Rival-holders put their temporary grudges aside and unite to go bring back family and friends and find out what this intergalactic presence really is. Craig leads the pack, struggling with his memory, but his individual charisma still has enough tear to keep his crew intact and alive. Ford on the other hand has a tough love shield that must be preemptively cracked, a more complex sub hero than we have been accustomed to. Indians get involved, and different languages must be spoken to garner respect, a more interesting subplot at points than their ultimate quest. Ella continues to jog Jake’s memory amidst his wrist zapping of tiredly familiar rendered aliens.

The story for the film was drafted by 7 writers, yes that’s right 7, and it becomes clear there is lack of focus. Favreau takes what I am assuming to be a compromised script and makes an enthralling attempt at a strong crescendo, but minor deviations keep it from majorly excelling.  Part of the problem for the Iron Man director is his penchant for incorporating mementos from other films, and in this day and age its hard not to. He incorporates the gusto of recent themed films combining 3:10 to Yuma’s angst with District 9′s subversive alien population. Pitting the cavernous outback of True Grit with the curiously uncharted nature of Cloverfield, which just happened to be directed by JJ Abrams, a collaborator with Spielberg already this year.

This just might be the fault of an overguiding presence. Steven Spielberg, infamous for his alien and human interactions has his producer tag on this summer flick as well and it seems Favreau’s creativity is bridled by the looming Spielberg shadow.Yet what Favreau misses in clear direction he makes up for with a sensitive approach to each character. It seems as though in most Spielberg based movies the human element is what rises above the shaky mythology of outer space life. Whether, in Cowboys and Aliens, it’s the loyal barking dog, a boy getting his first real knife, or the bartender learning how to shoot a gun, theres enough pull to root for them, how far that pull goes, well that depends on how much you like blood thirsty aliens and uncharacteristically worn cowboy hats.

There is  no lack of action however, and that may be this movie’s greatest strength as its descriptive title may show. Daniel Craig’s blue eyes pop from the screen because everything surrounding him is orange cavern or fiery molten rock. It’s almost like Favreau made his movie budget surrounding the investment of Tony Stark enterprises, especially with that nifty wrist gun. All that heat, smoke, and dust is enough to parch your throat at points, which makes you wonder why water is only offered once the entire movie. The sky is filled with the super natural, and the ground apparently with superhuman hydration.

One thing is for sure though; entertainment value this summer has been through the roof explosion wise. Whether you include plot substance a part of entertainment may redefine the “blockbusters” this year. Sure to bring in a pretty penny, Cowboys and Aliens has a little bit of everything: Indians, Aliens, and Cowboys, but not a lot of something. But then again, the title is Cowboys and Aliens. What did you expect?