'42' & 'Trance' Reviews

42 is a biopic of hall of fame baseball player Jackie Robinson who broke the color line. The subject matter of course is powerful and the movie tries hard, almost succeeds, but ultimately falls short on delivering on the legend. The dialogue and the performances run hot and cold. At times ranging from moving to over-the-top absurd to flat from scene to scene.

Harrison Ford as Ricky gives one of the most transformative performances in his career, for once not simply playing Harrison Ford. Unfortunately his character work, at times, becomes exaggerated to cartoon level but for the most part he is dynamic and convincing. Chadwick Boseman puts in a similar performances as Robinson. Most times playing the stoic, tortured hero to perfection but occasionally slipping into wooden delivery that is rendered totally flat on screen. Boseman a relative unknown was also in the underrated series Persons Unknown(on Netflix streaming).

These lapses in the movie, for it is mostly comprised of baseball scenes and scenes with Ford and Boseman, can also be the fault of the script. It relies at times on dialogue so cliche that no actor could make it believable. Similar to another biopic Lincoln there are slow motion scenes and scenes with powerful scoring that detract from the over all feel. We as an audience know Robinson is important, if we didn't we certainly realize it during the course of the movie, we do not need slow motion and high volume sentimental scoring to indicate that.

Good, could have been great.

Rent It.

Trance is a crime thriller about a man who assists on stealing a valuable painting but is hit on the head so forgets where he stashed it. The bad guys call in a hypnotist to assist in recovering the lost memories and therefore the painting.

I've only walked out of two movies in my life that I can remember: The Invisible and Cosmopolis, Trance makes three. All the characters are unlikable and illogical, the acting is transparent, and the script attempts to be so "complex" and "layered" that it becomes lost in its own structure. It seems like someone came up with the idea for the movie, wrote down the first thing they could think of, and started filming the next day.

There is nothing interesting or redeeming about the film. Complicated camera shots, effects, and surrealist settings mean nothing if there is no story to back them up. Granted I didn't watch the film to its completion but there was nothing in the first hour and fifteen minutes of the film that made me believe it could be salvaged.

Don't See It.