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"I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded." - Leo Durocher, Manger of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Spring Training 1947

Starring

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson

Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson

Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey

Christopher Meloni as Leo Durocher

Alan Tudyk as Ben Chapman

John C. McGinley as Dr Perry Cox Red Barber

Everyone knows who Jackie Robinson is. He's the black baseball player from the Negro League who broke the sport's colour barrier in 1947. This movie is the story of that event.

Well, not really. It glosses over a lot of stuff in favour of having us watch Alan Tudyk hurl some of the most vile racial epithets I've ever heard. 

We first meet up with Jackie as his Negro League team, the Kansas City Monarchs, is travelling through Alabama on their way to another game. A representative from the Brooklyn Dodgers sends Jackie to that city in hopes that General Manager Branch Rickey (played with enthusiasm by a sometimes unrecognizable Harrison Ford) can sign him to a contract. This attempt is, of course, successful... we'd have no movie otherwise.

This is where a lot of the glossing-over begins. After Spring Training, Jackie is assigned to the minor-league Montreal Royals. We only ever see Jackie in a Royals uniform during Spring Training and NEVER in Montreal, possibly because of this quote...

"I remember Montreal and that house very well and have always had warm feeling for that great city. Before Jack and I moved to Montreal, we had just been through some very rough treatment in the racially biased South during spring training in Florida. In the end, Montreal was the perfect place for him to get his start. We never had a threatening or unpleasant experience there. The people were so welcoming and saw Jack as a player and as a man." - Rachel Robinson

It's obvious that this movie was more concerned with getting the abuse Jackie was subjected to on film rather than showing that at least one place he played didn't care about his skin colour.

I am well aware that Jackie's presence on the Dodgers' roster was not welcomed with open arms by everyone. Members of the Dodgers sign a petition saying they won't play with him when he makes the Opening Day roster in 1947 (something that has only been rumoured, and never verified), he's ejected from a Spring Training game by on-field security in Philadelphia because "niggers don't play with whites" in that town... it had to have been mind-bogglingly awful for the guy. The screenwriters insert a fully-fictional scene where Jackie breaks his bat in the tunnel from the Dodgers' dugout to the clubhouse to show that even a man like Jackie Robinson had a breaking point.

I had a few issues with other, seemingly innocent aspects of the movie. It seemed that every time Jackie tied his shoes, or looked at a baseball diamond, the background music felt the need to mimic a John Williams orchestral score. Yes, Robinson was heroic for putting up with the shit baseball made him put up with. The score lays it on a little thick, really. Then there's the aforementioned glossing-over of historical facts (like how Robinson disliked the Negro Leagues because of its disorganization and acceptance of gambling), the sloppy way some characters are introduced (some giant corn-fed lookin' fella is traded part-way through the 1947 season, and even after researching that season I still don't know what the hell his name was), and - again, this is MY problem - the use of John C. McGinley as Dodgers' radio play-by-play man Red Barber. I kept waiting for him to refer to Jackie as "Newbie" or call Ben Chapman a girl's name.

MAN do I miss Scrubs.

The above bashing and Scrubs-worshipping paragraph-and-sentence doesn't mean I didn't find good in the movie. Chadwick Boseman's Robinson is very easy to like, and he plays the man with the humility that Robinson was known for. Harrison Ford nails it as Branch Rickey, and it was easy for me to disassociate the man from Han Solo and Indiana Jones, two previous roles that Ford has become synonymous with. I am a fan of both Christopher Meloni and Alan Tudyk, but I wish they were both used more and less at the same time (Durocher was suspended during the 1947 season for "unbecoming conduct", depicted as adultery in the movie but in reality was trumped-up charges of associating with gamblers ). Tudyk dives into his role as Ben Chapman with relish, but the character is really just satisfying the movie's need for a "bad guy" as the only scenes with him depict Chapman's crazy levels of racism, him being more polite about it and justifying the racism to reporters, and then finally having his picture taken with Robinson at the behest of Phillies management. I really wish they had utilized these two actors more, but I'll take watching them for even five seconds over two hours of Kristen Stewart.


FINAL REVIEW

42
2 snowflakes out of 5

TL;DR - Jackie Robinson was a polarizing figure, and a true hero for being brave enough to be the one black man in professional baseball until 1948. This movie does not do him justice.