Why I Saw This: No chance I was going to see Scary Movie 5 and I like a good sports movie.
Cast: If there was ever any doubt about if we could have a black Superman, that's been put to rest. He's played by Chadwick Boseman and the only difference is that he's called Jackie Robinson. Because, that is exactly what Boseman is asked to play: a superhuman. In some ways, that's what's demanded by the story. In other ways, it's a pretty boring decision. He did a good job playing the character though. Nicole Beharie does a good job playing the woman behind the man. Harrison Ford is having a lot of fun playing a character, rather than a different version of himself. Everyone else is familiar version of characters from a movie about race (the redneck, the one who comes around early, the one who comes around late, the one who never comes around, the one who doesn't understand what's the big deal, etc.).
Plot: Can we please have a new slant on the sports/race story? Any new variation. That's all I'm asking for. And, I don't mean, find a new sport, because that's all this movie is: a generic sports movie about race, except this one is baseball. Look, I think it's a good story to tell and I agree that it is important to remind people how far we've come (or how far we still need to go), but putting in this same half-assed by the books effort only serves to dilute the impact of the story. At this point, I'd much rather not see the story of a saint, but of a human, which this often forgets.
Elephant in the Room: Isn't just another one of those white savior movies? It can come across as that at first. Sadly, that's inevitable in a story about race and any sort of organized sport/game/anything in America. That said, this movie deifies only Jackie and reminds us that the white guys in charge have something to gain with his success. Additionally, one touch I enjoyed that you don't tend to get in these movies is that it repeatedly reminds us that there were plenty of people (even, "shockingly", in the South that didn't have a problem with integration. In the same way that there isn't no racism today, everyone wasn't all racist back then.
To Sum Things Up:
As a fan of the sports movie sub-genre, I did like this movie. Anyone who does like sports movies will find enough in it to enjoy. As someone who has seen a lot of movies and likes to see something new and different, I was irritated by this. Much like Glory Road, The Express, and it seems like countless others, there's a certain structure that this movie follows that is so boring. So yeah, if I used two words to describe it, I'd choose 'good' and 'derivative'.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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