42
Cast: Harrison Ford, Chadwick Boseman
Director: Brian Helgeland
Jackie Robinson was undeniably a top-level athlete, who required nothing more than a chance to earn his crust in his sport of choice – in this case the USA’s favourite ball-occupation of baseball. This is the stuff of inspirational documentary, but creating a compelling narrative around such a story is a great deal harder – especially when the subject is a star turn in his sport as well as being a civil rights icon. This (to me at least and I’m sure many millions of other non-Americans) perplexingly odd sport and bizarre scoring system continues to baffle and amaze us by its popularity, when so little actually seems to happen on the field of play. But that aside for now.
Most of the success of this film comes from frequent screenwriter and occasional director Brian Helgeland’s choice to make “42” a film about Jackie Robinson as a cultural force. Chadwick Boseman enters as a Robinson who is already a successful, confident athlete and frequent agitator of segregationist society. He’s already a chap with time invested in a relationship with a woman he marries just a few scenes into the film - and with the hindsight of history and the inherent drama that comes with the piece - you sense he’s already a man with a destiny. This we’re sure of, as the narrative tells us so, explicitly in a montage acting as a prologue. It’s a twee, cheap biopic beginning, but it does manage to set a tone for what is to follow.
The Dodgers’ owner Branch Rickey is played by a bulky irascible Harrison Ford, and brings out the best in him in a part armed with historical backing, making Rickey a gravelly, showman of a character, full of great quips delivered with the kind of biblical drama you can pull off when you’re portraying people on the right side of history. “He’s coming,” he says, referring to the black player who is going to change the face of baseball. Rickey has made a decision that the time has come for things to change. It is now an inevitability. The conflict comes from finding the rock-solid man who can not just handle the hellish racist abuse, but brave enough to take it, as plenty is on the way.
The scenes Boseman shares with Ford are uniformly excellent and it’s a great film about the many shades of bravery. The film earns the swelling triumph and the bittersweet laughs, a sentimental score notwithstanding, and Harrison Ford is a spectacular presence throughout the whole thing.
THE CALL
Director: Brad Anderson
Running time: 94 mins
Jordan Turner (Berry) is a skilled phone operator, handling the full gamut of emergency calls with relative ease, until her normally calm nerves are put to the test when a young woman trapped in a house and being chased upstairs by a mad intruder (sound familiar?) are shattered when she calls the victim back and the baddie hears the phone ringing and murders the woman.
Following this, Jordan moves on to tutoring new 911 operators to avoid adding to her previous stress and turmoil. However, when a young girl (Breslin) is kidnapped from a shopping centre car park, Superjordan quickly springs back into action, taking over the operating duties from the nervy novice who took the call. In a trice, Jordan gets to work on tracing the call, getting helicopters in the air and squad cars on the road – then the panic button gets pushed up to max, as she realises the kidnapper she's currently dealing with, is the very same killer she once lost a caller to. It's a small world indeed in this 911 life.
The film really is little more than a run-of-the-mill thriller that simply staggers around until it reaches a predictably implausible finale.
RUSH
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel
Brűhl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, Christian McKay
Director: Ron Howard
15 cert, 122 min
Chris Hemsworth (better
know to fantasy-action cinemagoers as 'Thor') portrays 1970s race track 'Beckham-of-his-day' James
Hunt, although JH was more attuned to the single-man glamorous champagne and
girls lifestyle.
Ron Howard’s latest outing looks in on the festering Formula One rivalry and begrudging mutual respect between Bond-wannabe blonde Brit (“Hunt, James Hunt” he introduces himself before seducing a nurse who is tending his wounds following a crash) and intensely focussed but charmless Austrian Niki Lauda (played well by Daniel Bruhl), as they battle through 1975/76 for the F1 World Championship.
The nucleus of the film is undoubtedly the marvellously authentic re-creation of Lauda’s horrendous crash in the notorious Nurburgring track, where he sustained dreadful burns to his face and internally to his lungs.
This is a well-paced, excellently portrayed and beautifully filmed work, with special kudos going to Peter Morgan’s zippy script and the supreme cinematography of Anthony Dod Mantle, and the whole thing is directed with verve, grace and style by the ever-reliable Howard. A hugely enjoyable and very worthwhile couple of hours’ entertainment.
