42

42 may be a Jackie Robinson biopic, but ”it’s not a baseball movie,” according to director and screenwriter Brian Helgeland. ”There’s baseball in it, but it’s baseball as a metaphor for the United States.” The film tells the story of Robinson’s signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, when he broke the color barrier for Major League Baseball. ”It’s one of those stories [that] if you saw it in a movie and it wasn’t true, you’d roll your eyes…. No one would be this brave,” says Helgeland, who cast Chadwick Boseman to play the icon alongside Harrison Ford as team exec Branch Rickey. ”Baseball is this field of honor that [Robinson] has to fight his way through,” he says.