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Helgeland provides his most clever touches in the ways he makes Robinson’s story resonate today. The California native had bristled at Southern segregation while in the Army. Helgeland plays up the racial threats Robinson received in spring training at Sanford, Fla. (where teen Trayvon Martin recently met his death). He shows us a grand arc among the players, many of whom signed a petition to keep Robinson off the Dodgers. They witness the racism of opponents, fans and others and blush in shame. The writer-director gives his star a lot of quiet moments, but Boseman, the center of it all, makes for a rather stoic and bland Robinson, which was what Rickey was shooting for, but it doesn’t do the movie any favors in the spark department The rest of the cast of “42” is no slam-dunk of A-listers. Hamish Linklater (TV’s “The New Adventures of Old Chris-
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caying-marriage tear-jerker “Blue Valentine” also starred Gosling, has built a reputation as idealistic and uncompromising, brilliant at creating mood amid an airtight structure. But where that film jumped back and forth in time, this one is linear — and that’s about the only storytelling convention Cianfrance follows as he plays with narrative arc and alternates between bursts of high-octane action and the gritty, foreboding yet dreamy feel of “21 Grams.” The second story, emerging before the first is quite over, gives us Bradley Cooper as wounded-hero cop Avery, facing corruption among his cohorts (including Ray Liotta). Avery soon reveals some serious ethical elasticity of his own. He builds on his “Silver Linings Playbook” serious-actor cred, with shifty, nervous eyes conveying the self-doubt and fear
tine”) isn’t built like an athlete of this or any other era. John C. McGinley seems totally wrong. Christopher Meloni suggests little of what earned manager Leo Durocher the nickname “Leo the Lip.” And Ford seems nothing like the real Rickey, even if he wins us over with gruff charm. But Alan Tudyk gives a spittle-spewing racist vent to Phillies manager Ben Chapman, and Lucas Black is absolutely perfect as the drawling star Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese, whose role in that season that changed America — 1947 — easily could have been forgotten, but which Helgeland movingly remembers. It’s the setting, the tone and the sentiment that “42” masters — the comically primitive attitudes of some of the white majority, the black fans and children inspired by Robinson’s odyssey, the barriers that today’s youth might be shocked to know ever existed. And it’s that affection for the game and the history that make “42” a number not just worthy of retiring from every major-league roster but worth experiencing as a movie.
BEL L ES
C O N S TRU C TIO N C O . IN C .
THE BES T RO O FING , S IDING ,W INDO W S & C ARPENTRY N ATIO N AL AW ARD W IN N IN G C O M PAN Y
824-7220 FREE ES TIM ATES PA012959
IF YOU GO
What: “The Place Beyond The Pines” 1/2 Starring: Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta, Rose Byrne Directed by: Derek Cianfrance Running time: 140 minutes Rated: R for language, violence, teen drug/alcohol use
he can’t express verbally. Avery’s father (Harris Yulin), a judge who can’t completely hide his disappointment in his son’s blue-collar career path, adds another generational element to the theme. Avery and his wife (Rose Byrne) also have a young boy. Jumping ahead, the third and weakest story in the film intertwines the fates of the sons of the cop and the criminal when they reach their teens. Unfortunately, the tail end of the triptych can’t sustain the dramatic tension that came before it without toppling an already precarious believability. Still, with so much to chew on, it doesn’t feel like that matters too much.
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