42

42 (2013) — watch online the biographical sports drama about Jackie Robinson on iFILM. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, with Chadwick Boseman in the lead and Harrison Ford as Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey.

Spring 1947. Rickey signs Robinson as the first Black player in Major League Baseball in nearly six decades. The backlash is immediate: hostile crowds, pitchers who aim at his head on purpose, and several teammates who refuse to share a field with him. Rickey's deal with Robinson is blunt — four years of silence; let the bat do the talking. Robinson's number, 42, was retired across the entire league in 1997, the only uniform number MLB has ever pulled league-wide.

Boseman carries the film on the tension of a man who has to absorb what he cannot say out loud, while Ford plays Rickey as a pragmatist whose motives are as much about winning as justice — which turns out to be the more honest portrait. Stream 42 (2013) online on iFILM.