…is a home run so says Michelle Obama, and I agree. It’s 1945, and baseball is proof that democracy is real. African American men served our country in the World War but came home to yet another long road of Jim Crow Laws. In this true story directed/written by the great Brian Helgeland (L A Confidential, Mystic River) it’s the year 1949 when every baseball player was white, until Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) recruited Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) as a ‘negro’ ballplayer.
In this season’s Lincoln of baseball films, Robinson’s $600 a week salary doesn’t begin to address his expectations not only in his performance as an athlete, but the amount of ignorant prejudice he had to endure on the playing field. That is until there’s a very endearing moment when his team begins to accept and protect him.
The film makes our current-day selves question how there was a time when a first baseman didn’t get the same respect that Red Sox players George “The Boomer” Scott or today’s Ortiz receive. And fyi,.. (spoiler alert) the player Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) needs to be slammed over the head with a bat!
One can’t be certain if this type of elegant and beautifully directed film will get box office draw,but it addresses so much more than baseball. Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) is the film’s narrator, the sports critic not allowed in the box because he’s black, too, so he sits in the bleachers, proudly watching the transition of the greatest baseball player who ever lived. The one who not only stole bases, but eventually stole hearts. ♔ ♕ ♚ 1/2 tiaras