42 (12A) 128 mins ***
The week’s other sporting
true story – how, in 1946, Jackie Robinson became major league baseball’s first
African-American player – will evidently have had greater resonance across the
Atlantic; its small, optimistic UK release is a bit like distributors asking
audiences in Poughkeepsie to gather for The Laurie Cunningham Story. Still,
writer-director Brian Helgeland has given it a handsome, faultlessly sincere
treatment, sounding a few pragmatic notes – dramatising how Robinson (newcomer
Chadwick Boseman) was initially recruited by Brooklyn Dodgers chief Branch
Rickey (Harrison Ford, blustering) to tap an emergent black fanbase – before
charting Robinson’s trial by and triumph over racist crowds, teammates and
opposition managers; rousing climaxes, mostly well-earned, arrive every
half-hour. Amid a roster of valuable supporting players (Christopher Meloni,
Lucas Black, Alan Tudyk), Boseman hits his key scenes out of the park, making a
swell couple with Shame’s Nicole
Beharie, while Helgeland stages Robinson’s signature base-stealing with
undeniable aplomb.
42 opens in selected cinemas from today.
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