As a Jackie Robinson 101 class, the movie 42 works well.

If it were a senior level class it would fall short in documenting the complexity of the man who broke baseball’s color barrier and the general manager who broke the game’s long-established gentlemen’s agreement to never let blacks play in Major League Baseball.

Overall, the movie was lacking in polish and its ability to capture the conflict of the time and the situation.

The surprising bright spot of the film was the performance of former Scrubs star John C. McGinley.

McGinley portrayed Red Barber, the beloved voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who admitted in Ken Burns’ Baseball he had to fight his own Southern upbringing to accept the decision to bring Robinson into the Dodgers organization.

While that portion is not mentioned, McGinley’s study of the Barber cadence is obvious.

The racial tension portrayed in this film was mild, almost making it seem more nostalgic than ingrained in ignorance, compared to the tension in such films as To Kill a Mockingbird and American History X.

To tell the Jackie Robinson story accurately there needs to be a palpable sense of the tension and the bigotry and hatred he endured.

The Southern rednecks seemed stock and even the Northern bigots seemed mere caricatures rather than people you loathed.

Chadwick Boseman did not make a convincing Robinson and it may be a good idea to watch the 1950 The Jackie Robinson Story, in which Robinson played himself, and wait for 42 to come out on DVD or Netflix.

Jackie Robinson was not merely a baseball player, he was a stoic warrior, who for his first year in what was white baseball, had to take the taunts, the pitches to the head and spikes in the leg without fighting back.

This is the period 42 focuses on, from his inaugural season with the Montreal Royals of the International League to his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

It stops short of letting us see, even for a minute, the second-season Jackie Robinson, the Jackie Robinson who was finally allowed to fight back and play the game of baseball with a vengeance that would eventually lead the Dodgers to a 1955 World Series title over the Yankees. That’s the story that needs to be told.

What the movie lacks in the portrayal of real conflict is made up in spirit.

Harrison Ford is adequate as Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey and it’s clear Rickey’s intent was never to use Robinson but a moral decision to break the longstanding gentlemen’s agreement and make baseball the national pastime for all.

It is a fairly good movie for understanding how baseball, under the guidance of Rickey, was ahead of the nation in the civil rights movement. It is a good movie for parents who want their children to understand our country was once the way it was or for teachers who want to give students a basic primer on a shining moment in the early civil rights movement.

Being a Jackie Robinson fan, who holds his accomplishments in baseball and civil rights on a heroic level, the editor was a little disappointed and believes the Sixth Inning of Burns’ Baseball is the better biography — Lance Martin

Lance Martin is editor and publisher of rrspin.com