A badge of Courage

Fictional movies often get more attention instead of documentaries or movies based on true stories. Now that doesn’t mean that they’re great, they are really great, an example is 42. 42, is a movie that just came out and is about Jacky Robinson. Jacky Robinson was the first African American baseball player in major league baseball; he was a great player who didn’t have the guts to fight back, but the guts to not fight back. To learn from the movie you need to know what I felt and knew about Jacky before the movie, what I was thinking during the movie, and after the movie.
Before the movie started I was a little skeptical about the movie; whether it would be like a documentary or the Blind Side. What I knew about Jacky Robinson was just the basics that he was a African American ballplayer and was the first in major league baseball, pretty basic right? Well after I did some research I found out that he was a second baseman that was born in 1919. Then moved to first base in the minor league. That’s all together what I knew before hand but critics know a lot more and they said lots of things; Tampa Bay Times said “One of the all-time great sports movies.” Times Out New York said “The takeaway, a daily struggle for dignity, is impossibly moving.” Those are some examples from the critics. So now that I knew that the critics liked it, I had to go see it.
So during the movie I was thinking three main things, the storyline the action and the meaning of the movie. The story line seemed flawless–no seams from scene to scene—flowing in and out of scenes like a waterfall. The action surprised me a lot. I was thinking that it would be mainly be filmed off the baseball diamond. It wasn’t it was really balanced like 50-50 or around there. Now the movie wasn’t a nail biter—I was not enthralled in the movie but I definitely wasn’t sleeping in the theater on the scale of interest; I would say it’s a seven and a half out of ten. Now the meaning of the movie for me is probably what we always get taught as a child; that if someone hits you don’t hit back, thus the “You have to have the guts to NOT fight back.”
After the movie I learned new things. The main one was that he had a girlfriend then when Branch Rickey, the general manager, contacted him. They talked and right after he contacted her and proposed to her. Another one was that a group of white people were heading over to his house during the night but his “agent” got him up but didn’t tell him anything, so they were driving and they got a red light near a bar with some white bikers walking out then they started walking toward the car so his agent sped off he almost got hit head on so he told Jacky why he did that and Jacky started laughing his head off because he though he’d been cut from the team. That was the kind of stuff that I learned. So compared to the critics I would say that I was give-or-take on par with them. Now if I rated the movie involving everything I would say it would be a nine out of ten. That’s what I think of the movie all together.
So in the end saying what I thought before, during, and after the movie wasn’t that surprising comparative to the critics. Great baseball players everywhere look up to Jacky Robinson because he was the first and he stood by it. There’s a bunch of people in sports who are inspirational, they’re the biggest names in the sport today, even if they’re dead. Some examples are Bo Jackson, babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice the list can go on and on but those are different stories. They’re legacy will always be around and they’re will always be people to hear them. So what I take away from the movie to always have the guts to not fight back.