42 (2013)

That poster makes it look like Jackie Robinson is clinging for his life as he slides off a cliff...

As much as I shudder every time I see "Based on a True Story", it's refreshing when I see it on a movie about someone and something I have more than just a vague awareness of.  42 is one such movie, about the introduction of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player in Major League Baseball, to the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers in the mid-40's.

Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), general manager of the Dodgers, decided for various reasons that it was time to break baseball's 'color barrier'.  He started the search for the right man, and quickly decided on Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), a star athlete for UCLA and Army veteran.  Ricky felt that Robinson had the right personality and skill set to succeed in what he knew was going to be very difficult situation.  Robinson was an intelligent and confident man, willing to speak and stand up for himself, but Rickey asked him not to do this.  The reason for this was simple enough; even if Robinson was provoked, any retaliation would be used by his detractors as examples of Robinson's inability to handle the game or pressure, or even reversing it and saying he's the one that instigated.  So, Robinson has to bite his tongue, look the other way, and do everything in his power not to fight.  You see him put up with an amazing amount of shit, and you can only sympathize.  Despite his struggles, he's (still) a hero and inspiration to many.

Like Moneyball, 42 is a baseball movie that doesn't require intimate knowledge of the game.  It's not stat driven, even though the opening monologue might make you think that for a second (and Branch Rickey happened to be one of the pioneers of statistical analysis in baseball).  Also, like Moneyball, some of the actual baseball elements were some of the weakest of film.  In some cases they felt really inaccurate.  Many scenes are shot in a way where you can't see a swing or pitch, or what you do see is awkward to the point where it's doesn't look athletic.  At the end of the film, Robinson hits a homer and you hear the announcer say the Dodgers have won the pennant, when I'm petty sure it was only the first inning.  You don't see anyone walking off the field as if it was a walk-off, and the teammate that congratulates him as he reaches home simply looks like he's ready for his at bat.  These aren't huge mistakes, but I think it's the kind stuff that purists are going to notice.

Then again, baseball is kind of boring.  They have to focus on exciting sequences of Robinson taking a walk, or attempts to pick him off first, cause that's all the game really had to offer at that point.  No steroids in baseball back then.  Yes, I'm just kidding around.  Chadwick Boseman as Robinson managed to show a playfulness when on base, seemingly taking delight in the disruption he'd cause on the basepaths.  Boseman even resembled Robinson, and did a good job of mimicking his batting stance (the actual swing looked a little off though).

Also as far as the overall look of the film, I liked that as well.  I thought they did a great job of recreating the look of some of those older uniforms and ballparks, without getting overly nostalgic about it.  I like when a period piece doesn't go out of the way to draw your attention to all the details they cram in there, and just lets you enjoy it.

I also thought there was a lot of colorful dialog throughout the film as well.  Writer and director Brian Helgeland did a good job keeping it interesting while being respectful to the man and the period.  Outside of a few things here and there, there's not a lot of chances taken though.  Overall, I would call it a very workmanlike effort.  I was surprised at the amount of humor.  It made a movie with so much weight a little easier to get through, and it seemed to quicken the pace a bit.  Some of the humor came off as unintentional though.

Harrison Ford gives one of his better performances in recent memory. He's been very grumbly and disinterested in many recent movies, but here he has a fiery passion about him.  Dr. Cox from Scrubs (John C. McGinley) has a subtlety comic performance as the Dodgers play-by-play announcer.  He was one of the smaller things I really enjoyed about the film and I think it may go largely unnoticed.  Alan Tudyk plays an opposing manager and single-handedly attempts to break Django Unchained's record for most uses of the 'n-word' in a 5-minute scene.  If it hadn't had been Tudyk playing the role, I think it would have affected me a little more in a negative sense, but the more he does it, the more it becomes unintentionally funny.  I also really enjoyed Christopher Meloni as manager Leo Derocher, but he's unfortunately not in the movie enough.  Derocher seems like a character that would make for an interesting biopic all on his own.  Even Lucas Black was enjoyable as Pee Wee Reese.

I've already mentioned a little about Boseman's performance, but I thought he did a great job as Jackie Robinson.  It's a good example of how casting a relative unknown in such an iconic role can help your movie.  If you got someone with a bigger name to play it, I think you'd have to fight the thoughts of, "Oh that's just 'x' playing Robinson."  Another standout was Nicole Beharie as Jackie's wife, Rachel.  She was definitely his rock, and you can imagine how without her, Jackie would have had a harder time dealing with all the abuse.

I think the biggest flaw of the film is that there's a very Hollywood quality about it.  I've always hated using the term "Hollywood" as a criticism.  It's a little nebulous.  With 42, I'm more referring to the overall cheesiness of the film.  Like many stories based on real events, a lot of things are streamlined or arranged to make for cleaner and more dramatic storytelling.  Maybe I'm just a little jaded from watching these types of films, where I just can't trust how much played out exactly like you see on screen or how much was done to manipulate the audience.  I also thought the sweeping score was too dramatic to the point of being distracting.  It reminded me of the score from some of the recent Spielberg films.  That's not to say that it wasn't affecting though.  There are times you're sitting in your seat wishing you could fight these people on Robinson's behalf.

42 is a good, crowd pleasing film, with lots of strong performances and interesting dialog.  You definitely don't have to be a baseball fan to get something out if it, and it's important to see what a inspirational figure Jackie Robinson was.  It's not a perfect film, but worth a matinee.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

Alex Cross (2012) - Movie Review

I have to confess some ignorance up front.  Even though I saw both Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, I didn't realize that Morgan Freeman was playing Alex Cross in both movies.  You can imagine my surprise when I heard that Alex Cross is a reboot of the series that's based on a popular book series (20 frigging books!).  The current film is loosely based off the novel "Cross", the 12th in the series.

What I did know was that a lot of people were in a bit of an uproar when it was announced that Tyler Perry would be playing Alex Cross.  Even though this is a reboot, how do you replace someone of the caliber of Morgan Freeman with Tyler Perry?  Plus, I think it stings the fans even more when you hear that Idris Elba was originally attached to the role.  He would have been perfect.  Go watch Luther on Netflix/DVD if you haven't yet, by the way.  In all fairness to the man, Perry is only like the tenth worse thing about the film.  I'm not sure Elba, or anyone else, would have been able to save it.

Anyway, for those unfamiliar, Alex Cross (Perry) is a detective and psychologist.  Think of him as like a Sherlock Holmes type that can pick up on minutia instantly and profile the suspect.  He lives in Detroit with his family, and is considering a move to D.C. to take a job as an FBI profiler.  He's also learned that he's expecting his third child.  It sets up like many other detective movies.  At least he's not gearing up for retirement and announcing that he's getting too old for this shit.

Juxtaposed with this is an assassin that goes by "Picasso" (Matthew Fox).  Picasso is a bit of an enigma, brutally beating a man in an MMA fight at the beginning of the film, leaving charcoal sketches at the scene of his crimes, but then he's the kind of guy that takes pleasure in the torture and killing of his victims.  After killing a businesswoman, Cross and his team are brought in to investigate. They figure out who Picasso's next target is going to be, and after a close call, Picasso decides to makes things personal.

This is where the movie could have become really tense, but it instead it seems to take on a somber note and fizzles out. Picasso does something that should motivate both Cross and his partner Tommy Kane (Edward Burns), and while Cross initially seems to be going down that revenge path, Kane is almost completely forgotten in the mix.  Neither seem all that angry and are just kind of going through the motions.  There's very little in Alex Cross that gets you invested emotionally.

This is one of the main things that bugged me about Alex Cross.  It's simply not a well written story.  Nobody's developed all that well, and there's some really clunky exposition and dialog throughout.  It's always bugged me when a film goes out of it's way to explain relationships between characters, when it should be implied.  Here, you have relationships defined multiple times by the dialog.  This is all a shame, because when I read the synoposis of "Cross", even that reads more interesting than anything that happens in the movie.  Maybe the screenwriters should have stuck closer to the novel.

Picasso's character was all over the place: over-the-top psychotic in some scenes, but in others acting like a cheap Hannibal Lecter knock-off.  You have a paid assassin that seems more interested in screwing around with Cross, rather than the work he's contracted for.  It was really inconsistent.  I want to blame the performance of Matthew Fox, but I can't.  Fox has been fine in many other films and TV, so I can only blame his direction and the script.  I feel bad for him too, because it looks like he got in ridiculous shape for the role and tried his hardest.  I liked seeing him playing a bad guy; I just wish it was in a better film.

I feel that way about the whole cast really.  While I do think Tyler Perry was miscast, I didn't think he did that bad of a job, and it's one of the few times he came across as likable to me.  Edward Burns seemed to hit the right notes, even though this isn't anything new for him, but his character was underwritten.  Same with Rachel Nichols, who just can't seem to catch a break landing a larger role in a good film.  Giancarlo Esposito shows up for a scene and shines, which just made me wonder why he wasn't considered for Alex Cross, or why they didn't make him the villian instead.  John C. McGinley is wasted here as well as the Police Captain.  Why hasn't McGinley gotten better roles after being awesome on Scrubs for so many years?  Cicely Tyson was probably the strongest performance as Cross' mother, but again, she isn't given much screen time or much to do.  Jean Reno also has a small role, but the conclusion of his story, and the movie, is really ham-fisted.

I haven't been the biggest fan of Rob Cohen's other films (xXx, The Fast and the Furious, Steath), but as far as action goes, he's a capabale director.  Alex Cross desperately needed something to bring some excitement into the film, but it's just devoid of life.  It's bizarre that even the few action scenes aren't shot well.  You'd think this would be the strength.  When we get to the ultimate showdown, it's set up by a totally convenient collision that forces the confrontation, and then we have one of the worst shaky-cam fight scenes in cinema to date.  Shaky-cam scenes are usually a cover for bad fight choreography or actors that can't fight, but how do you have a scene like this in the film, when you open it showing us that Picasso is an MMA badass?  Now he gets beaten up by older man not known for his physicality?  Just once I'd like to see a fight in a movie go down realistically.

Alex Cross isn't a good way to reboot a franchise.  It's totally lazy, uninspired and lacks anything to make you care about the characters or invested in what's going on.  There's nothing here that's new, and even TV shows pack more punch and originality.  It's not insultingly bad, but there's nothing about it to recommend.  Remember how I said to watch Idris Elba in Luthor?  That's my recommendation.  Don't watch Alex Cross, watch Luther instead.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Stars