First trailer for "42"

Jackie Robinson was one of those cultural figures that comes along every couple of centuries like Caravaggio or Napoleon. In the case of Robinson there were professional sports before Jackie Robinson and professional sports after Jackie Robinson and they are not the same thing.

In Brian Helgeland's picture Robinson is played by newcomer Chadwick Boseman and the man who signed him and played him, Branch Rickey, is played by an almost unrecognizable Harrison Ford. Helgeland has gone for the mythic treatment if this trailer is any indication and that seems perfectly appropriate given the stakes and the size of the hurdles Robinson would have to leap on his way to acceptability. Rickey knew something about most bigots that most bigots didn't know about themselves: people love a winner. He reined Robinson in off the field so that nothing would detract from what he was doing on the field.



"42" opens April 12, 2013.