Rating: 
Summary: It's Odd Man Out
Review: John Sayles' film successfully informs the viewer about the myriad facts surrounding this infamous time in baseball history. Given the large cast and need to cover so much ground, it is probably inevitable that certain aspects of the movie feel somewhat superficial, limiting the movie's emotional resonance (final scene excepted). For example, character development is limited at best, and we are not shown in a convincing fashion how players' families may provide both positive and negative support and pressure. Again though, the director's central goal seems to be to deliver the facts about this chapter of baseball history, and in this he succeeds. And one could certainly argue that embellishing the personal stories could only be done at the expense of historical accuracy. Regardless, the lively score, strong acting, and fast-pace also help insure that this history lesson is delivered without the soporific qualities of many documentaries.While the baseball scenes were generally solid, one TINY detail rang false. At one point late in the film John Kusack's Weaver shouts out, "I hit .327 in the series". While it's possible he really said that, it isn't possible he hit it. You need over 50 at bats to hit precisely .327, and you can't reach 50 at bats in even an eight game World Series!
Rating:
Summary: It's Odd Man Out
Review: John Sayles' film successfully informs the viewer about the myriad facts surrounding this infamous time in baseball history. Given the large cast and need to cover so much ground, it is probably inevitable that certain aspects of the movie feel somewhat superficial, limiting the movie's emotional resonance (final scene excepted). For example, character development is limited at best, and we are not shown in a convincing fashion how players' families may provide both positive and negative support and pressure. Again though, the director's central goal seems to be to deliver the facts about this chapter of baseball history, and in this he succeeds. And one could certainly argue that embellishing the personal stories could only be done at the expense of historical accuracy. Regardless, the lively score, strong acting, and fast-pace also help insure that this history lesson is delivered without the soporific qualities of many documentaries. While the baseball scenes were generally solid, one TINY detail rang false. At one point late in the film John Kusack's Weaver shouts out, "I hit .327 in the series". While it's possible he really said that, it isn't possible he hit it. You need over 50 at bats to hit precisely .327, and you can't reach 50 at bats in even an eight game World Series!
Rating: 
Summary: EIGHT MEN OUT Let's the film goer Inside...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: This is baseball!!!
Review: The best baseball film ever, hands down. It is as faithful to the book as a 2 hour film allows. The set, costumes and overall style seem to be right on the mark for 1919 Chicago. There is not a bad performance in the film, but John Cusack stands out as Buck Weaver. There is a passion for the game in his performance that is refreshing to see. Chocked full of stars before they made it. Check out John Mahoney as manager Kid Gleason and Gordon Clapp as HOF catcher Ray Schalk. This is a film for people who love the game. If you are passionate about America's pastime, do not miss this film!!!
Rating:
Summary: Eight me Out
Review: the one and only thing i have to say about this movie is that i could watch this dvd over and over again for the rest of my life.
Rating: 
Summary: Yesterday. That was yesterday.
Review: There will always be the question of importance between sports and money. Which is more important? Do today's players participate because they love the game, or is it because they are thrown millions of dollars to play? It is a question that will continue to be a part of our culture as long as million dollar contracts are signed. I couldn't help but think of this concept as I watched this film. In 1919 the players of a winning Chicago baseball team decided to throw in their chances of a World Series title just to earn some extra cash for their pockets. The results of this game lead to interrogations, an appointment of a baseball commissioner, and a decree that would punish these ball players for the rest of their lives. For those of us that were not around in 1919 to experience this event first hand, director John Sayles has decided to show us the events first hand through dry cinematography, horrific acting, and a drama that is lacking in ... well ... drama.
One of my favorite John Sayles films is Sunshine State. In it, Sayles takes characters and gives them so much emotion and spirit that you are literally pulled off your couch and glued to the television for the entire two hours. I wish this were the case for Eight Men Out. Sadly, where this film lacks is confident actors and a intense and knowledgeable screenplay. You could tell from the beginning that this topic was a passion of Sayles, but that he also had trouble directing it. It didn't seem to move as smoothly as some of his other work. I think one of the main reasons is due to the players that are under his lead. These are not dramatic actors, but instead some of the "hottest" talent that 1988 had to offer. I kept thinking that he was trying to compete with the 80s teen idols film that was released the same year called Young Guns. He wanted to have a film that brought those normally not interested in a film of this kind into the theater. Hey, it worked for me. John Cusack is not a dramatic character, while later in his career he reaches this level, at this point in his life he is still has that persona of a imaginative teen. This causes his "big" dramatic scenes to seem less and less relevant when they are presented. Charlie Sheen's accent faded in and out throughout this entire film, while D.B. Sweeney couldn't shake the cliché ways of his character's lack of education. Instead of being dramatic, I found myself full of laughter. I needed stronger actors to pull this film from out of left field.
Finally, for those seeking a gritty drama about the hardships of "rigging" a game, do not look in this direction. This is not an Oliver Stone film, this is John Sayles, which means that he is incapable of pushing any buttons. There were so many directions and dark alleyways that he could have taken us with this film. I wanted to know more about how these eight men won the trial, I wanted to know more about the confessions, I wanted to know more about the industry, but nothing was handed to me. I just had to deal with ignorant characters that were about to get five years in prison for their crimes, and nobody was worried. It infuriated me when the ball players walked into the courtroom and it was nothing but a joke and media frenzy. It seemed like they didn't care about the trial at all, so which left me no choice but to not care either. I dislike sports films immensely, and this film is one of the reasons why!
Grade: * out of *****
Rating: 
Summary: The Purge of Baseball's Chicago Eight
Review: This 1988 film is based on the 1963 book, which has a more detailed history of this event. Many items were omitted from this film drama. John Sayles plays the sportswriter Ring Lardner. The film starts by showing the low paid players sweating on the field while the team owner enjoys the luxuries from his monopoly. There was no mention of the 1919 Anti-Trust verdict against the Baseball Cartel, or the later Supreme Court decision that "Baseball was a Sport, not a business" (how much was paid for this decision?). The film then shows how star pitcher Eddie Cicotte was cheated out of his $10,000 bonus. Some of the players are approached by the ever-present gamblers (the book says "Chick" Gandil called up "Sport" Sullivan weeks before the World Series began). The book explains how the best players on the White Sox received poor wages and expense money. The suspicions about the 1919 games were soon forgotten "for the good of the game". It was a business decision, not personal morality. But the recurrence of "playing just like they did in the World Series" in August 1920 meant that the Baseball Owners would have to make an example. If fixing games meant a loss of dollars from attendance, then the baseball business would end as a professional sport. There were other ways to influence the betting odds: stories of a train wreck and injured players as on 9/10/1920. Money and gambling were as endemic to baseball as to other sports. The eight ballplayers were charged with "conspiracy" in a confidence game - in Chicago! The trial ended in a "not guilty" verdict (a bigger fix than the World Series?). Signed confessions had disappeared! But now baseball, and the owners, were officially declared clean. A new Baseball Commission banned the eight players from Major League Baseball for life. The ban on "association with gamblers" remains to this day, as Pete Rose learned to his sorrow. Since then the White Sox have never won a World Series. Some talk about a "curse", but this may just symbolize the reality of life and sports in Chicago. You may wonder if games are still being fixed today? The 1994 strike and the high salaries suggest an end to the temptations of 1919. There are better jackpots in fixing the price of electricity or gasoline. Wall Street is still the Wild West where anything goes unless they can catch you. And many are way too smart to be ever caught,since they use intermediaries to take the blame. Ben Hecht's "The Front Page" gives another view into 1920s Chicago; it is a more lively film. Some say baseball movies don't do well at the box office; maybe it is due to the type of producers who are attracted to this subject?
Rating:
Summary: The Purge of Baseball's Chicago Eight
Review: This 1988 film is based on the 1963 book, which has a more detailed history of this event. Many items were omitted from this film drama. John Sayles plays the sportswriter Ring Lardner. The film starts by showing the low paid players sweating on the field while the team owner enjoys the luxuries from his monopoly. There was no mention of the 1919 Anti-Trust verdict against the Baseball Cartel, or the later Supreme Court decision that "Baseball was a Sport, not a business" (how much was paid for this decision?). The film then shows how star pitcher Eddie Cicotte was cheated out of his $10,000 bonus. Some of the players are approached by the ever-present gamblers (the book says "Chick" Gandil called up "Sport" Sullivan weeks before the World Series began). The book explains how the best players on the White Sox received poor wages and expense money. The suspicions about the 1919 games were soon forgotten "for the good of the game". It was a business decision, not personal morality. But the recurrence of "playing just like they did in the World Series" in August 1920 meant that the Baseball Owners would have to make an example. If fixing games meant a loss of dollars from attendance, then the baseball business would end as a professional sport. There were other ways to influence the betting odds: stories of a train wreck and injured players as on 9/10/1920. Money and gambling were as endemic to baseball as to other sports. The eight ballplayers were charged with "conspiracy" in a confidence game - in Chicago! The trial ended in a "not guilty" verdict (a bigger fix than the World Series?). Signed confessions had disappeared! But now baseball, and the owners, were officially declared clean. A new Baseball Commission banned the eight players from Major League Baseball for life. The ban on "association with gamblers" remains to this day, as Pete Rose learned to his sorrow. Since then the White Sox have never won a World Series. Some talk about a "curse", but this may just symbolize the reality of life and sports in Chicago. You may wonder if games are still being fixed today? The 1994 strike and the high salaries suggest an end to the temptations of 1919. There are better jackpots in fixing the price of electricity or gasoline. Wall Street is still the Wild West where anything goes unless they can catch you. And many are way too smart to be ever caught,since they use intermediaries to take the blame. Ben Hecht's "The Front Page" gives another view into 1920s Chicago; it is a more lively film. Some say baseball movies don't do well at the box office; maybe it is due to the type of producers who are attracted to this subject?
Rating:
Summary: Baseball in 1919 and the tainted World Series of that year
Review: This 1988 film, directed by John Sayles, has a lot going for it. It's a dramatization of the underpaid Chicago White Sox who took bribes to throw the 1919 World Series. It's historically significant as a real event that happened and it's also the story of baseball and what it was like in that era. John Cusak is cast in the role of Buck Weaver, a ballplayer who doesn't want to participate but keeps quiet nevertheless. The other actors are less familiar to me. The owner of the team, Charlie Cominsky, was a difficult man to work for. When his team won the pennant he gave them flat champagne instead of the $10,000 bonuses he promised them. And because he had promised a pitcher a bonus for winning 30 games, he purposely benched him so that the pitcher could win no more than 29. Salary was $6,000 per year and they had to do their own laundry. This was a team that was ripe for exploitation by the gambling interests at the time. Arnold Rothstein, the famous gambling tsar, manipulates everybody, but his role gives some insight into his character. And Ring Lardner and John Sayles himself play sportswriters. I was confused by the ballplayers though. Perhaps if I was familiar with this particular 1919 team I would have been able to recognize them, but they looked alike and all blended together in my mind. The best part of the film was the historical detail. There was no radio or television then. So if you weren't in the ballpark, you had to go to a gambling parlor where a gentleman with a stuffy accent read the play-by-play from tickertape. There was a large baseball diamond on the wall and another man would chart out the game as it was read from the tickertape. The acting was good, the moral dilemmas clear. The players wound up double-crossed by the gamblers and then put on trial. All this was fascinating. Especially since it was true. However, the film just misses getting a high recommendation from me because of my confusion about the ballplayers. But if you don't particularly care who was who and want to relive a small piece of American history, you'll like this video, especially if you're a baseball fan.
Rating:
Summary: good film
Review: this film captures the controversy involving the Chicago WHite SOx and the Infamous Shoeless Joe Jackson.about throwing the 1919 World Series.they haven't been back since.it seems every team with the name SOx in them have been Hexed.this film was well done but just lacks Emotion overall.but still a must-see and a good film.for Baseball Fans.
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