‘Mr. 3000’ reveals Bernie Mac’s star quality

Denzel who?

In “Mr. 3000,” Bernie Mac slides into a role that could easily have been played by Denzel Washington or, for that matter, Mel Gibson. And, once you get past the surprise that Mac is starring in a movie that has some funny parts but is not a comedy, the bigger surprise is that his performance is authoritative, sexy and moving. Mac was swell in supporting roles in “Bad Santa” and “Ocean’s 11,” but “Mr. 3000” shows he is a movie star.

Maybe the presence of Angela Bassett, never exactly Ms. Light- hearted, should have clued us in that “3000” would take a turn for the dramatic.

Mac plays a major-league creep, a retired slugger for the Milwaukee Brewers who has to un-retire when it turns out three of the 3,000 career hits on which he built his reputation weren’t legit.

Still a legend in his own small mind, he returns and tries to eke out three more hits, while rekindling a testy romance with ESPN reporter Bassett.

When Mac returns to the Brewers and sees players even more arrogant than himself, he begins to mend his ways. It doesn’t happen overnight – the movie is too subtle and intelligent for that – and Mac’s empathetic performance makes it believable.

“Mr. 3000” is the best baseball movie since “Bull Durham” – it goes easy on the grandeur-of- the-game blather that usually mucks up baseball movies and shows us some of that grandeur instead.