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Film Review: "42" Lobs it High, Tries to Make You Cry
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 13 April 2013 11:44
- Written by Matt Oakes
'42'
Directed by Brian Helgeland
Starring Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie, Christopher Meloni, Alan Tudyk, John C. McGinley, Ryan Merriman, Lucas Black and Andrew Holland
Biography/Drama/Sports
128 Mins
PG-13
An often feckless biopic milking sentimentality at every turn, 42 may be an inspiring story but it is uninspired filmmaking. When you break through all the pure formula, there’s little to distinguish this from other, greater films which tackle similar territory of an African American underdog rising up in a sporting arena in race-intolerant America. Though a good story is embedded in here somewhere, you’d best bust out the knives because the sap is so thick you’ll have to cut deep to find it.
42 chronicles the true story of Jackie Robinson’s (Chadwick Boseman), the first African American major league baseball player, first year playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in deeply segregated 1947. Dodgers GM Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) spits in the face of tradition by electing to draft an African-American ballplayer because Harrison Ford says so. Rickey finds the ideal candidate in Robinson, a thick-skinned rookie with a penchant for stealing bases. And where Robinson is truly a maestro at stealing those bases, filmmaker Brian Helgeland doesn’t make off with his blatant attempt to steal some tears.
From the get-go, the pandering score clues us in to the hopeless sentimentality which will dominate the feature. The faux-inspiring, melancholic score is deeply reminiscent of John Williams at his most indulgent, a symphonically-situated-somberness used to play up the audience’s sense of sympathy. But having played this card so early in the game, it's impossible to miss the emotional manipulation oh so conspicuously taking place behind the curtain. Instead of building his house of cards carefully, Helgeland charges full forward into the sobbing mire, never even attempting to woo and court us before he takes us out back to the milk-machine.
Probably the films strongest asset is its talented host of performers. Boseman offers a faithful portrayal of Robinson, balancing his callous and charm with a careful hand. Although, for the star of the film, he sometimes seems a little out of his league. A scene that involves a smashed bat in the shadows may be particularly stirring but it’s one of the few moments where the inner-working of Robinson actually come into the light.
Given the chance to work the comedic relief, Ford offers a fairly slight performance as Branch Rickey. We’re shown that Rickey is a good guy but he’s got very little depth beyond being a kindly subversive figure. His motivations are veiled until a big reveal that didn't stir up the emotional value it thinks it did and as a result, the character suffers. He’s Billy Beane from Moneyball without the palpable, ticking sense of angst and fervent rebellion.
The real winning performances in 42 come from Alan Tudyk, who plays the epitome of a redneck racist and John C. McGinley, the strangely cadenced game day announcer. While most of his fellow actors in the film are playing in safe, Tudyk is tasked with spewing out the most offensive racial slurs he can get his hand on and boy is he effective. Within moments, you want to strangle this dopey-eyed son-of-a-bitch and yet he's so pathetic and lost that you can't help but pity the man.
Although the true story behind the man who wore the number 42 seems dutifully told here, it is all so glossed over that it gets difficult to see straight. The nitpicky details may be covered but the execution is a poor thatch job of benchmarks that settles with reporting the facts rather than weaving them into a thoughtful narrative. Anytime Helgeland attempts to edify us, it just seems like a cheap collage of scenes that hop from Robinson’s recruitment to his ultra-lame marriage proposal to his baby’s birth to his difficult transition into the majors. Since these stepping stones are treated as random asides, they never feel like fundamental additions to the character or his story arc.
The best drama in the film is mined out on the ballfield where Robinson is in his element and the whole production seems at its most comfortable. Out here, there's no trying to pigeon-hole in side narratives or elicit a false emotional response. Like Robinson so often say, they're just here to play ball. It's in these moments that the unspoken acts of racial violence seem the most present and disturbing.
While baseball after baseball are intentionally thrown at his head, Robinson can only summon the strength to be a better man than his ignorant colleagues and it makes it that much more powerful when he knocks one out of the park. In this study of race in baseball, 42 scores but even then Helgeland can't help himself but to slow things down to a slo-mo trot and pan across the audience to random, uplifted black folks and jeering whites again and again and again.
Every time the film looks like it's going to rise to the occasion, it shoots itself in the foot, reading from the book o' cliché. Instead of boldly going where no one has before, it settles with following tradition and leaving the mold as it is. Other films, such as Remember the Titans, have done this story before and hit all the weighty notes without the senseless pandering that takes place here.
Perhaps its greatest asset is also its greatest flaw: an eagerness to please the masses - as its appeal is unapologetically broad. This is drama for the moms and pops, not for the student of subtlety. While I’m sure some would claim that it takes its fair share of risks, those mostly gravitate around its copious use of the n-word: a tired-and-true mine for easy sympathy; a sweeping play for the ‘Aww’s and a cue for the white guilt to kick in. The real risks, however, are left for another day, for another movie, for another audience, as this one is happy picking up the crumbs from every other black-person-playing-sports-back-in-racist-times movie.
At the center of the 42 is a stirring tale of resistance, of character, of will-power and of personal triumph- a Jesus-esque tale of turning the other cheek and growing in spite of it all- but every time these earnest moments show their head, they are quickly degraded by a spewing geyser of soapy sentimentality. Even in the decadent little movements of intimacy, over-sensationalization takes hold and bucks the viewer into a fatiguing stronghold.
D+
'Stanley Kubrick' Exhibition in Los Angeles
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 10 April 2013 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Stanley Kubrick
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, CA
Kubrick on set of 2001 (photo: (C) Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.)
Stanley Kubrick’s films are filled with so many indelible images that it was probably difficult for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to choose which would show off its Kubrick exhibition, now running through June 30.
"42" Plays It Safe But Still Hits Home
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2013 15:05
- Written by Lloyd Carroll
42
Starring: HarrisonFord & Chadwick Boseman
Written & Directed by: Brian Helgeland
Considering Jackie Robinson’s prominent position in American history, it’s frankly surprising that the film industry had not done a biopic on him until the just released 42 that stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager who signed him to a contract with the Dodgers organization in 1946 that would finally integrate Major League Baseball a year later.
Screenwriter and film director Brian Helgeland wisely limits this fast-moving two-hour film to the 1946 and ‘47 seasons and there is certainly more than enough material for him.
Film Review: "The Place Beyond the Pines" A Gloomy, Thoughtful Meditation on Legacy
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 07 April 2013 22:41
- Written by Matt Oakes
The Place Beyond the Pines
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta
Drama/Crime
140 Minutes
R
Following up the brilliant Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines is an equally challenging film that's not without its faults but the ambitious scope and structural risks allow it to tackle themes of reverberation and legacy that rarely come together so effectively.
In crafting a spider web of stories that don't orbit around noxious serendipity, Cianfrance has made the anti-Crash. He's directed a film that actually justifies its revolving door of narratives rather than using them as a crutch for poor screenwriting and in doing so explores the interconnectedness of two families destined to collide and the aftermath that follows.
The film opens on a quiet, young rebel named Luke, the always-winning Ryan Gosling, sporting the ever-popular bleeding-dagger-face-tattoo, cloaked in a red leather jacket and zipping hither and thither on his beloved dirt bike. Luke is a man living in the cacophony of his life decisions - a rootless, wandering soul who abruptly discovers that he has a son with one time lover Romina, Eva Mendes. When Luke decides he wants to help raise the child, he realizes the meagerness of funds accrued from riding while a stunt bike in a sphere cage. However impressive his gravity-defying, harmonious loops may be, they aren't quite enough to win over the mother of his child and as a result, turns to robbing banks with lowlife buddy Robin, in a great little turn by Ben Mendelsohn.
Even when Luke is scraping bottom and cawing at fearful tellers and bank patrons, he never seems like a bad guy; a lost soul, surely; a desperado at wit's end, yes; but never that cold-eyed criminal these characters are so often reduced to. The fleshed out dimensionality of Luke is due in large part to the casting of Gosling who adds a dollop of sincerity and humanity to even his tough guy roles.
As Luke's story accelerates, we met Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a law-school-grad-turned-rookie-cop whose heart is in the right place. This is a man of justice with a ideological stance and a vendetta against corruption. Cooper scores here again and offers a complex and thoughtful performance offering some Oscar worthy soundbites that are sure to turn heads.
The natural dissonance so craftily built here is that both Luke and Avery are likeable individuals doing the best they can in the circumstances of their lives so it's hard to take sides. Each suffer their own character flaws; their personal follies that both drive them and define them. It just so happens that these traits happen to put them on a collision course with each other. What begins when they finally do crash is an inter-generational battle between naturally polar forces. Order clashes with anarchy and the resulting push and pull becomes characterizing moments in these people's lives.
It's the age-old tale of the lawman and the criminal but the film steps outside of these constraints when it shifts the narrative to their now-aged children: AJ Cross (Emory Cohen) and Luke's offspring Jason (Dane DeHaan) - exploring how the conflict between their father's spans more than just their generation. As Jason embodies the somber, gentle persona of his father, AJ is a drug-addled bully - the antithesis of his father's principles. Here we question the power of heredity and genetics with regards to their respective upbringing, what and who is ultimately responsible for who these young men will become. It's a battleground for the war between nature and nurture to unfold.
However sweeping the tale becomes, in these stark transitions between narratives, Cianfrance loses the sense of pounding momentum he has worked so hard to build in the first place and though this ultimately pays off in the end, it seems like there could have been a way to incorporate these rivaling tales without feeling like three conflicting movies compete for the biggest piece of the pie.
But what ultimately makes The Place Beyond the Pines such a successful meditation on legacy is Cianfrance's refusal to take sides. There's clearly a well-defined legal good and evil but outside the stringent reach of the law, life isn't so black and white. Bad things happen to good people and money is stolen by cops and criminals alike. Goodness comes not from what we do but how we do it and what we do it for. As the wheels spin round, we wonder if we're helpless to change the things set in motion for ourselves.
While the scope here offers a commanding view of the nature of reverberations, the mood is repeatedly dour and at times painstakingly hard to watch. This glum tone takes command and when paired with the shadowy cinematography by Sean Bobbitt (Shame, Hunger), things often seem hopeless. But it is only at our lowest point that we are able to rise up and although the conclusion is up to interpretation, it's impossible to deny the beauty of everything coming full circle.
Even though the film wallows in a lot of muck, The Place Beyond the Pines charters an ambitious course which few successful others can rival in terms of breadth. Each and every performance on display is top-notch and even though it might not be the type of breezy, uplifting cinema most audiences pine for (see what I did there?), it will be sure to leave you thinking minutes, hours and days later.
B+
