This is like a better version of George Lucas’ Red Tails without the explosions. Oh yeah, and change fighter pilots with baseball players.
This is like a better version of George Lucas’ Red Tails without the explosions. Oh yeah, and change fighter pilots with baseball players.
Disclosure: I hate baseball. It’s a dull game that extends for hours needlessly because somehow statistical analysis has become part of the “fun.” And grown men are given 147 million for three years of chucking a ball at some other goon – and then hits that goon his first day out and then gets into a fight with said goon and leads with his COLLAR BONE, breaks it, of course, and is out the rest of the season, which is good because his has to sit with accountants and figure out how to shelter all that money from the IRS. (Editor’s Note: This is not actually what happened, but Dean did say he doesn’t like baseball.) The whole thing is a ploy to distract us from the fact that the government is robbing you blind. Therefore, slow-motion line drives to center field past the fences with stirring string music doesn’t thrill me, nor do close ups of players’ faces make me tense up about the outcome of any given inning. Which this movie has in droves.
Anyway, real life Jackie Robinson had a hard time of it, being the first black player in MLB. He was brought in by Branch Rickey, a Brooklyn Dodgers executive, here played by a doting Harrison Ford finally not trying to pretend he is an action hero anymore. This is the first time I think that I have seen him play a character and not be completely high on screen (his 64 acres in Montana grow SOMETHING). His character choice was to go with a toned down Foghorn Leghorn/Jimmy Stewart angle, and while some scenes border on the comedically ridiculous, he manages to pull it back probably by the graces of the script itself. If he was playing that in Red Tails… Lord save us all.
Anyway, overcoming racism and learning to judge a man not by the color of his skin but by his batting averages and RBI provides the dramatic motor, since it is a forgone conclusion that Mr. Robinson will make it to the big leagues. There is his time with the Montreal Royals farm team, and some spring training scenes in Florida to get you to the 1947 season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but all the scenes play like tidbits biding time to when we get shots of him sucking in his anger as various rednecks treat him poorly, intercut with determined grimaces to put one over the fence. Finally his team comes around and they all win big, in more ways than one (as I am sure is how the pitch went).
The acting is alright, but it is hard to fuck up slow burn indignance and gritty steel. His wife, played by Nicole Beharie, is thankfully spunky and charming and carries more of this movie than she should have to. Ironically, both these actors were in a movie called The Express about the first black college player to win a Heisman Trophy. I never saw that because I hate football more than baseball.
It is hard to avoid the cliched tropes because they actually happened, and so while it was shocking and fresh in the 60’s with Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night or even with the made-for-TV biopic of Roots author Alex Haley, the same unfortunate ground has to covered again and again because some ignorant people never learn. Even if you fear the unknown or the different, let’s end racism anyway so we don’t have to make movies like this ever again. Or at least pay baseball players regular salaries so they stop financing them. Or maybe I should overcome my bigotry to big league sports players and shell out THOUSANDS of dollars every year to see these adults do the same thing I did when I 10 but apparently, according to mind numbing stats, better.
Dean Haglund
