For all that the plot revolves around murder and corruption, this 1984 adaptation of Bernard Malamud’s novel brings to mind a more innocent age. It’s a story about baseball, set sorta-kinda in the 1930s, and has a lot of baseball’s lore and best moments woven into the story. Robert Redford heads up a truly all-star cast (Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, Kim Basinger, Richard Farnsworth, Wilford Brimley…even some of the bit parts have furture A-listers playing the roles) to create a genuinely enduring sports movie.
Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a farmboy from the heartland who has maybe more talent than anyone ever did for baseball. He heads for the majors, only to be derailed by temptation and one very very bad choice. Sixteen years later, an aging Hobbs gets his shot. He has one season left in him, one season to prove himself. The bulk of the movie deals with this season, Hobbs’ ups and downs, and along the way weaves several different themes together into a cohesive whole. The lessons Hobbs learns are timeless, and director Barry Levinson walks a very fine line indeed between reality and mythology. But the balancing act works, Randy Newman’s score is superb, and I’m not afraid to admit that I enjoyed having my emotional reactions tugged this way and that. Rocky has nothing on this movie.
I also enjoyed the bonus feature, in which Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripkin, Jr. talks about the game, about keeping a level head when you’ve got talent, and what the movie meant to him. Ripkin is one of the few modern players who seems to have kept some of the old-time values, and it’s refreshing to see a true superstar who isn’t some sort of anti-social primadonna. He’s also articulate, insightful and humble, which brought to mind a hero of the era that the movie depicts…a fellow named Gehrig.
Go ahead and buy this one. The setting, the lack of CGI (or virtually any special effects, for that matter) make this a movie that will view as well years from now as it does today. Certainly, the twenty-plus years that it’s been since I first saw it haven’t hurt it at all.
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