|
| • Advanced Search • Help |
Eight Men Out | Year: 1988 Directed: - John Sayles Actors/Actresses: - John Cusack EIGHT MEN OUT Let's the film goer Inside... John Sayles' labor of love about Baseball's original sin is a great piece of filmmaking. Using an ensemble cast (with John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeny, and Richard Strathairn), a host of veteran character actors ( including Kevin Tighe, Christopher Lloyed, Clifton James, John Mahoney, Michael Lerner and John Anderson), and a few surprises (John Sayles himself and writer Studs Terkel as sports reporters) Sayles has recreated and retold with great detail the "Black Sox" Baseball World Series scandal of 1919 in which players were payed by gamblers and con men to throw the series. Not only is the film a great baseball movie, it is a great period piece capturing the gambling lifestyle of the era. Also it gives filmgoers a view of the business of baseball long before the advent of free agency when the owners (and even gamblers) ruled the game and the players were pieces of property making a common man's wage struggling to make that extra dollar. This is probably one of the best Baseball films ever made and any baseball purist should have seen this movie. Standout performances by John Cusack as Buck Weaver and D.B. Sweeny as Shoeless Joe Jackson. The ensemble cast making up the White Sox team is authenticated by having the actors actually play baseball. Overall,historical,informative and entertaining. A Must For Baseball Fans In 1919, the Chicago White Sox faced the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. It was supposed to be an easy victory for the White Sox. After all, they had the best team in the league by far that year. What happened in the end has shocked the baseball world ever since. The White Sox threw the world series and let the Reds win. This movie does a wonderful job of telling the story of the White Sox aka "Black Sox" during that fateful year. John Cusack, D.B. Sweeney, and David Strathairn are the stars of the film, playing Buck Weaver, Joe Jackson, and Eddie Cicotte. Charlie Comiskey's infamous penny pinching is shown in the film as Cicotte was due a bonus in his contract for winning 30 games. He ended up winning 29 despite being injured for a time, but Comiskey still didn't give Cicotte his bonus. This had a major influence on Cicotte deciding to help throw the series. Sweeney does an excellent job as Jackson, the sharp hitting illiterate outfielder. He didn't take the bribe and had an excellent series, hitting well over .300. The game scenes are excellent, and the behind the scenes action with the announcers and crooks is well-done as well. In the end, each player was acquitted by a court of law for any wrong-doing, but Commissioner Kenisaw Mountain Landis, regardless of the jury's verdict, still banned the 8 Sox players from ever playing baseball again. The movie ends with Buck Weaver (Cusack) watching an old but still great Jackson (Sweeney) playing in a semi-pro game somewhere in the South. Baseball fans will surely love this excellent movie. I also recommend "61" by Billy Crystal. The tragic story of Buck Weaver and the Black Sox scandal Every time I watch "Eight Men Out" I am not really sure how I stand on the question of whether or not "Shoeless" Joe Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame, but the film certainly reaffirms my long held belief that justice might best be served if Charlie Comisky was kicked out of the shrine of baseball immortals. It is useful to remember that the team was already known as the Black Sox before the 1919 World Series because they refused to pay for their own laundry when Comisky decided there were additional nickels to be made from cutting that particular corner. What Comisky did to create an environment on his team that gamblers were able to exploit is amply set up. Even before the gamblers double-cross the boys and have to take extra steps to ensure the outcome of the series against the Reds, it is Comisky's arrogant dictatorship that makes us look with some measure of sympathy towards the Black Sox. Director John Sayles, who takes a turn as sportswriter Ring Lardner singing "I'm Forever Throwing Ball Games" on the train carrying the team, this 1988 film certainly gets the most out of its limited budget. Based on Eliot Asniof's book, which is a very detailed account of the entire scandal, the film focuses on the eight men who, for various reasons, ended up throwing away their reputations and their careers. The details on the scandal are in the book; Sayle's film focuses on the basic elements are the moral ambiguities of a complex chain of human actions. Certainly the tragic figure in "Eight Men Out" is not Jackson (D.B. Sweeney), who certainly receives his biggest cinematic boost from "Field of Dreams," but rather Buck Weaver (John Cusack). Weaver's sin was that he failed to rat out his teammates once he knew there was talk of a fix. Judge Kenisaw Mountain Landis, a necessary evil as the game's first commissioner, needed to scrap out the cancer of this scandal even if it meant cutting to the bone. That meant that Weaver, who was the third baseman on Ty Cobb's all-time team, suffers the same banishment for life from the game he loves as those who took payments to throw the World Series. Weaver's nobility is further enhanced in the film because he is the one who has time for the kids in the sandlot and who believes that the lessons he learned as a boy playing the game still apply not only to baseball but also to life. Jackson is something of a cipher in the film, more legend than flesh and blood human being. Consequently, Weaver's character stands in contrast to Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker), the limited "brains" behind the scandal and Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), the star most wronged by Comisky the skinflint. Even at the end of the film, when we see "Shoeless" Joe on a semi-pro field playing under an assumed name, it is Weaver who offers the film's benediction from the stands and Weaver who emerges as the most sympathetic figure. If you get to vote for anyone to be in the Hall of Fame from the Black Sox, Bucky would be your man. But neither Weaver nor Jackson is in Cooperstown and there is a second ballpark on the Southside of Chicago named for the true villain of the story. Buy Eight Men Out at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Eight Men Out Search with the Priority Search Engine on Eight Men Out This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
|
