'American Pastime' a real American story
"American Pastime" is a story taking place during an historic period for the United States.
It is a story of great promise, irony, life, love, existence in a concentration camp, redemption and, oh yeah, it's a baseball movie.
Lyle Nomura (Aaron Yoo) is American born of Japanese ancestry. He's an all-American boy whose family has a comfortable home and a good business.
He also loves baseball and is thrilled to get a scholarship to a college to play baseball.
Then Dec. 7, 1941 rolls around and his life takes a dramatic change.
He and his family have only days to sell the family business, sell the family furnishings and give the family dog to the neighbor. Because they are Japanese, they must go to a degrading internment camp.
These were dark days in American history. As we learn at the end of the film, there was never any report of espionage by any Japanese-Americans during the war. We also know that no German-Americans were ever imprisoned during the war.
But this is a many-layered film. We also meet Billy Burrell (Gary Cole), a guard at the prison. His dream was always to make the Major Leagues and with so many baseball greats going into the service, he kept his dreams alive, even into middle age, even with a wife and nearly adult daughter.
The daughter, Sarah Drew, seems like the all-American girl of the early 1940s. She loves traditional music, strives to please the family and not make waves.
But when she meets the jazz-loving Lyle and falls in love, all of that goes out the window.
There is definite animosity toward the Japanese in these camps, as ridiculous as that sounds today. Some townspeople tolerate them, simply because the Japanese have kept some of their money and are using it to make their drafty, austere barracks into something more home-like and are buying the materials at local businesses.
One barber would just as soon the Japanese keep their distances and when Lyle's war-hero brother returns home for a visit, he is denied a haircut.
All of this is the setup for a baseball game between the townspeople's premier team and a team created by the internment camp residents.
You may have to suspend belief just a tad at the ending of this film, but it is a great eye-opener to our not-too-distant past.
Whether you like history, baseball or just an old-fashioned love story, "American Pastime" is worth a rental.
AMERICAN PASTIME
Directed by Desmond Nakano
Screenplay by Nakano and Tony Kayden
Runtime: 105 minutes
Not rated but should be fine but all but very young audiences, who probably wouldn't be interested. Fine for preteens and teens interested in sports to give them idea about this period in history
4 stars out of 5
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