"King Arthur" on the baseball diamond...some pleasures to be had

Rating: 7/10 (26 April 2008)

Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a middle-aged ballplayer in 1939 who is recruited to the New York Knights baseball team based upon his freelance success at the game; his new coach keeps Hobbs benched out of spite, but when the chips are down, Hobbs shows his miraculous way with a bat and ball for all the world's amazement. Barry Levinson directed this handsome, burnished film-version of Bernard Malamud's book, with a coffee-table elegance and lots of crusty sons-of-bitches in the line-up. Some of the plot-mechanisms are tacky (such as out-fielder Michael Madsen's exit, or when Hobbs is told to knock the cover off the ball and he actually does it), and the underlying mysticism of the story is never quite brought to the fore (there is magic and the opposite of magic--jinxes--at work here, yet the pieces seem to fall into place by unassuming design). The gals are either good or evil, while the men (Wilford Brimley's coach, Robert Prosky's blackmailing Judge, Robert Duvall's reporter) are rank-and-file old coots. I'm not sure what Brimley's personal beef is during much of the picture, and Redford's unwavering loyalty to him seems to come out of nowhere. Richard Farnsworth is always wonderful to have around as an assistant coach, and Redford does a very fine job at being mysteriously stand-offish and cautious (and he cuts a nice figure out there on the field). The movie has peaks and valleys; it would've been wiser to shake off the cobwebs a little sooner and get Hobbs out of that dugout, but it's prettily photographed and, at times, moving, perceptive and absorbing. **1/2 from ****