{"id":34962,"date":"2013-04-12T08:26:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T15:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=34962"},"modified":"2013-04-12T08:26:04","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T15:26:04","slug":"rethink-review-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2013\/04\/12\/rethink-review-42\/","title":{"rendered":"ReThink Review: 42"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/download\/42Jackie121\/42%20Jackie_1-2%201.mp3\">Listen to this segment <\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><a href =\"http:\/\/www.rethinkreviews.net\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\" alt=\"Rethink Reviews\" \/><\/a><strong>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em>  <\/p>\n<p> Read his reviews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/ReThinkReviews.net\">ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim\">www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews\">twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews&#8217; theme song is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/restaurantmusic\">Restavrant<\/a>.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>42:The True Story of an American Legend<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201842: The True Story of an American Legend\u2019 is about Jackie Robinson, a four-sport phenom from UCLA who broke baseball\u2019s color barrier in 1947 and became the first African American baseball player to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. The danger of making a movie about a pioneer, hero, and legend like Robinson is the urge to whitewash (no pun intended) any of the controversial aspects of his life to protect his saintly status. And that\u2019s mostly what \u201842\u2019 does, while also portraying the President and General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, as the saint behind the saint. But while there\u2019s a lot in \u201842\u2019 that\u2019s corny, predictable, and almost Disney-ish, I\u2019ll admit that I got choked up a few times, because apparently, I get moved watching people learning not to be racists.<\/p>\n<p>The film mostly follows the period when Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) brings Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) into the Dodgers\u2019 system to boost ticket sales, first sending Robinson to the Dodgers\u2019 Montreal farm club before eventually bringing him to Brooklyn. Nicole Beharie plays Robinson\u2019s angelic, impeccably-dressed wife Rachel, and the cast is rounded out by T.R. Knight as Rickey\u2019s assistant, Andre Holland as a reporter following Robinson, John McGinley as the Dodgers\u2019 announcer, Christopher Meloni as the Dodgers\u2019 coach, and Ryan Merriman, Lucas Black, Hamish Linklater, Brad Beyer, Jesse Luken, Derek Phillips, and others as Dodgers players with varying levels of prejudice. <\/p>\n<p>Since Robinson went on to be a great baseball player and you might\u2019ve noticed that black people have gone on to do pretty well in professional sports, \u201842\u2019 is an inherently predictable, feel-good movie, but without many surprises other than how jarring it is to see just how racist America was less than 70 years ago, where Robinson was constantly jeered, threatened, targeted by other players, turned away from hotels, and had other teams refuse to play.<\/p>\n<p>Boseman does a good job as Robinson, but since the movie doesn\u2019t delve much into Robinson\u2019s inner thoughts and his orders were to play hard, swallow the abuse, and never retaliate, the character doesn\u2019t develop much. Ford gets almost equal screen time, but Rickey is also a one-note character, showing up regularly to growl some wisdom or encourage Robinson to be strong. And if you ever don\u2019t know what you\u2019re supposed to be feeling, the film\u2019s overly-dramatic score will set you straight.<\/p>\n<p>But \u201842\u2019 is less about how these two men changed than about the way others changed because of them, drawing multiple parallels between then and now while putting a lump in my throat multiple times. There\u2019s something beautiful about watching black fans watching Robinson, so filled with hope and pride as they hang on his every move and are inspired by something they never thought they\u2019d see in their lifetimes. When you contrast that with the hatred issuing from the racist fans, I couldn\u2019t help thinking of Barack Obama\u2019s election in 2008 and how Democrats and minorities saw it as an inspirational milestone while Republicans saw it as a sign of the apocalypse. Arguments that a black player will disrupt team cohesion are just like what we heard about gays in the military, and when the movie\u2019s most racist character claims that an integrated baseball \u201cain\u2019t the America I know\u201d and that his bigoted rants are simply \u201cdefending baseball\u201d, it\u2019s hard not to hear the echoes of gay marriage opponents.<\/p>\n<p>But what was the most stirring for me about \u201842\u2019 wasn\u2019t watching Robinson show up his detractors, it was seeing his teammates and others triumph over their own prejudices. Most people who were racists in 1947 weren\u2019t simply ignorant jerks like they are now, but people who had grown up in a world where racial equality wasn\u2019t even imaginable. Maybe conservatives who see \u201842\u2019 will realize that sometimes a previously unimaginable shift is for the better, and they won\u2019t want to be left behind like the racists in \u201842\u2019. Despite its flaws, \u201842\u2019 is a great illustration of a moment where America was given the choice between the right and wrong side of history, and by and large, we chose correctly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201842: the True Story of an American Legend\u2019 is rated PG-13 and opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34963,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962\/revisions\/34963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}