The story of Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 broke baseball’s tacit color barrier, and thus in many ways helped lay the groundwork for the untangling of Jim Crow laws and other racial prejudices that would stretch out over the Civil Rights era, is a remarkable one — full of compelling resolve and steadfast character in the face of real, sustained nastiness. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, 42 (so named for Robinson’s jersey number, retired by every major league baseball team) skims pleasantly enough along the surface of this potentially roiling drama, a biopic of carefully crafted but ultimately superficial uplift.
Chadwick Boseman (above) stars as Robinson, and the movie is mostly built around the plan for his ascension to the major leagues, as first crafted and then implemented, by Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), starting in 1946. Wooing Robinson from the Negro League’s Kansas City Monarchs, Rickey goes against the advice of some of his consultants, putting the speedy, five-tool player on a fairly fast track for the big leagues, routed through the Dodgers’ Montreal Royals farm league squad.
Come 1947, Rickey’s plans seem momentarily waylaid by the year-long suspension of the Dodgers’ manager at the time, Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni), a no-nonsense guy sympathetic to Robinson as much because he wants to win as anything else. Rickey presses ahead however, tabbing Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), a Pittsburgh Courier baseball beat writer and fellow African-American, to try to help ease the transition.
Boseman has an undeniably engaging screen presence, and it’s nice to see Ford — chomping cigars and buried under some bushy fake eyebrows — fully engaged, and diving wholeheartedly into an actual character, something he’s never really done. Many of the supporting players, too, are well rendered; John C. McGinley makes a nice impression as radio announcer Red Barber, while Alan Tudyk registers in effectively uncomfortable fashion as Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman, a racist, heckling foil of Robinson’s during an early season series.
But there’s a posed and overly polished quality to almost all the drama, not much aided by composer Mark Isham’s relentlessly prodding score. Helgeland builds his screenplay around a lot of smartly chosen moments — a player coming to Rickey with a piece of hate mail, only to discover the much larger amount Robinson himself has been receiving; another teammate attempting to talk Robinson into showering at the same time at the rest of them, instead of self-isolating — but these moments are as often as not undercut by simpleton staging, with blocked-off, back-and-forth medium shots and close-ups. When Rickey tells off a fellow team owner over the phone, Ford faces forward the entire time, performing for the camera. Similarly, platitudes flow freely in the dialogue.
The film’s division feels roughly right — the first half covers both Rickey’s rationale for integration (money, with a pinch of nobility) and Robinson’s minor league assignment, while the latter hour covers Robinson’s arrival in the majors, with a heavy emphasis on the first week — but there’s precious little inner boil here, no captured translation of the ongoing psychological toll on its protagonist, apart from an awkwardly conceived breakdown scene on the hidden inner steps of the dugout. Instead, Helgeland invests more heartily in Robinson’s domestic life, with his wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie) and their new baby boy. This plays fine enough but seems kind of yawning, desultory and generic given the rich potential for something a bit more chaotic and genuine. 42 dutifully elicits sympathy, but lacks the sort of grander multi-dimensionality its subject merits. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 129 minutes)
