Eight Men Out

source: Eight Men Out

Sayles makes an all-star cast film? Yes and no, because they were all unknowns when this was made. Still you can still see that Cusack was destined for bigger stuff. It takes a typical and historic American tale, but adds a bit of the Sayles influence. Silent heroes and put-upon men being exploited. Not quite a "Limbo" or "Lone Star", but this is still entertaining and involving stuff. And finally, what is it about baseball that produces such good films? A seemingly boring sport, but "Bull Durham", "A League Of Their Own" and especially "Field Of Dreams" are all decent films.

Money is sometimes a poison to any sport, the problem becomes bigger when the sport men are badly paid and the owner is gaining a fortune. This is what happened in 1919, baseball players of the quality of Ed Cicotte, Lefty Williams and Joe "shoeless" Jackson were not paid adequately while Mr. Comiskey was earning a lot with the impressive performance of his team. So the solution was not far and the players accepted to sell the games for money that never came to them. Most of these players are dead at present, but it would still a justice to really know whether Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver played for money. It is true that they knew of the deal, but one thing is to know and another is to play wrongly. Looking at this film you finished with these doubts and nobody may yet clarify them. In any case, the film was done very well giving the correct environment of that period in Major Leagues, the gloves used by players, clothes, etc. Among the actors, I like the acting of David Strathairn as Cicotte, D.B. Sweeney as Joe Jackson and John Cusack as Buck Weaver, but the most outstanding for me was Sweeney.

The topic was quite interesting, especially to Chicagoans, namely the 1919 Black Sox scandal when it was discovered by suspicious reporters that several of the White Sox players were deliberately playing badly during several crucial games which would have brought the Sox into the World Series championship, and its aftermath. So where did this movie fail? Basically, it tried to cover too much with too many characters-the players, the managers, the reporters, the fans, anyone connected, so that the film lost focus. Nobody is developed, and it takes a scorecard to figure out who is who and what is going on. We don't learn exactly what went on or why. Comiskey is depicted as a skinflint who had little regard for his team, but I read elsewhere that he wasn't as bad as the movie depicted. Shoeless Joe Jackson was depicted as clueless, and while he was illiterate (still not that rare in that era), that didn't make him incapable of knowing what was going on. Also, what motivated the corrupt baseball players other than greed? They weren't working for starvation wages. The movie neither works as drama or as a depiction of history.

John Sayles is always, always honest with his audiences, never resorting to cheap tricks or unwarranted sentiment; and this period drama about the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919 may be his finest hour. Incredibly handsome and lavish-looking for a low-budget indie, it's a meticulous re-creation of the first huge scandal in American professional sports, and the beginning of the loss of innocence in pro baseball (and American popular culture by extension). If that makes it sound a bit dry, let it be said that the characterizations are vivid, the characters multilayered, the costumes gorgeous, and the staging of the baseball games unusually convincing. (Ever notice how movie stars can't really fake pro-athlete moves? Watch John Cusack charge an outfield fly, or Charlie Sheen slide into third--they had me convinced.) In a uniformly excellent cast, David Strathairn's morally tortured star pitcher is especially impressive, as is John Mahoney's manager, alternately loving and despising his players, his eroding trust etched on his expressive face. And what a wonderful touch having Studs Terkel play a cynical sportswriter: He's the essence of Chicago style. Some of the facts of the story are necessarily simplified or omitted to keep the movie under two hours, but there's not a moment of dishonesty or "Field of Dreams"-type goo. By the time the kid is looking Joe Jackson in the eye and pleading, "Say it ain't so," you'll probably be sniffling. A high-water mark in the career of a great, versatile, underappreciated moviemaker.

John Sayles is one of my most favorite American writer-directors. His film editing, his script doctoring on other Hollwood scripts, his fiction, his acting - I admire them all, but this is one of his films that just doesn't work. MATEWAN, CITY OF HOPE and LONE STAR are American classics that I feel will be greatly revered in decades to come - but with what he accomplishes in those three films, he fails quite badly at wiith 8 MEN OUT. Normally, Sayles has no problem handling a large ensemble of characters, but by spreading the Black Sox scadal story over the players, the owners, the gamblers and the reporters - the film seems to not have any focus, any real point of view. The gamblers say this in one room, the players say this in another and then time for some more baseball playing. There isnt much depth here while in LONE STAR and the others, literally every character on screen has dimension and weight. That's not to say this film doesn't have it's moments: a great cast of under-used actors like Michael Rooker, Don Harvey and D.B. Sweeney, plus solid work from Sayles veterans Straitharn and Gordon Clapp. It's nicely acted but the script needed a few more drafts. Sorry Sayles - one this one you're out at second!

It almost feels like cheating to complain about this movie. John Sayles took an incredibly complex story with at least eight memorable characters, and made a coherent and entertaining period drama. That should be enough, and yet -- somehow it's not. EIGHT MEN OUT fails for a number of reasons. First of all, the left-leaning Sayles is trying to be an advocate for the despised working class. This would be fine, but somehow he transforms eight tough, hardened men into limp, passive, oddly childlike characters. An earlier poster got it right when he mentioned that Buck Weaver was "not nearly this nice in real life." Not that these men were MEAN, but they were hard men in a hard time. In this movie, Swede Risberg coaxes and flatters Joe Jackson into joining the conspiracy. In real life he threatened to break his face. John Cusack plays Buck Weaver as Bambi, all helpless and innocent when the bad men take his bat and ball away. By the same token, Joe Jackson (who had been in the Big Leagues since 1911) was certainly old enough and tough enough to know what he was getting into. The film portrays him as borderline retarded, with the face of a twelve year old. Is this the best Sayles can do when coming to terms with an American tragedy? And what's with the cute little kids, anyway? Readers of James T. Farrel's STUDS LONIGAN trilogy will know that the boys of Chicago's South Side in 1919 were more like the savage club and razor-wielding droogs of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE than these McCauley Culkin wanna-be's. Maybe Sayles was getting his casting tips from Michael Jackson! I humbly suggest that the real Buck Weaver was probably much harder, more cynical, and more used to being brutalized -- less Bambi, more Brando in ON THE WATERFRONT. Instead of coming across as complex and honorable, the movie portrays Weaver as a weak-willed sap. I don't suppose we could have expected HAMLET, but maybe something along the lines of THE WILD BUNCH would have worked. Buck Weaver is clearly Deke Thornton, while Chick Gandil is Pike Bishop. Regrettably, however, Sayles is paralyzed by his socialist school of naturalism, and is unable to imagine working men as anything other than passive victims. Another reason the film fails is that Sayles takes an entirely false and self-congratulatory tone when depicting the two sports writers, Ring Lardner and Hughie Fullerton. These men are depicted as being above suspicion simply because they are sportswriters. In other words, white collar workers are men of integrity by definition, while blue collar workers are easily led astray. This is the leftist genius? But watch the film and you will see that Sayles never asks the most obvious questions about Ring Lardner. Didn't he know the Sox were underpaid? Didn't he take management's side against the players for years? Wasn't he just as exploitative as Comiskey himself? The movie presents Lardner as a crusading truth teller, when in reality he was a moral coward who always backed the status quo. To sum up, then. By refusing to treat the White Sox as men, by refusing to make hard choices and state uncompromising truths, Sayles has opted out of tragedy, and settled for pathos.

Eight Men Out provides a "Reader's Digest" version of the complicated events surrounding the 1919 World Series. If you forgive the fact the film has to simplify certain aspects of the conspiracy in order to make the film easier to digest, then you will find that Eight Men Out is a worthy film and in the category of "baseball movies" it's one of the best. There are anachronisms in the film here and there, the worst of which is Buck Weaver's question asking which of the lawyers was the "Babe Ruth" of law. Sure Babe Ruth was coming into his own by 1920, but most ballplayers in that era would not have place Ruth in the class of Cobb, Tris Speaker or Walter Johnson. For baseball fans, this line in particular really comes off as shallow, especially since the rest of the film really tries to capture the "dead-ball" era. For the most part though, this film feels and sounds a lot like America right after World War I ends, a fascinating time and place. Studs Terkel steals the show in my estimation. His character in the film is not far from whom he is in real life and his authenticity is undeniable. John Sayles is a little stiff by comparison and his singing in the railway car (which according to legend did actually happen), is rather difficult to bear. None the less, his direction makes up for his foibles as an actor. Straitharn is another gem in this movie, and once again this actor seems to get right to the soul of the characters he is given to play. Eddie Cicotte's dilemmas are written all over Straitharn's face in every scene, he's also given some of the best dialog in the film. Cusack plays his part well, despite the fact that many of his scenes are reduced to clichés. Cusack's best moments are when he is frustrated about his inclusion in the conspiracy trial, despite the fact he gave his all to try and win the series. His outbursts in the courtroom seem perfect, as if drawn from the trial transcripts themselves. Joe Jackson is given unfair treatment. If "Field of Dreams" mythologizes Jackson to point of hyperbole, "Eight Men Out" plays up his illiteracy with too much of a heavy hand. Joe Jackson wasn't stupid, indeed if you read his last major interview before he died, he speaks about the "Black Sox" with great alacrity and clarity. He was not as ignorant as this film would have you believe. One day someone will produce a film about Joe Jackson, that will portray him accurately, but Eight Men Out is not that film. Although their roles are very minor, Kid Gleason and Ray Schalk are really well played and written. These two went through a very difficult time during the series, and this is well demonstrated. One minor beef is that Nemo Leibold, Shano Collins and other players outside of the conspiracy are never touched upon at all. This is understandable to a degree given the relatively short length of the film, despite the complexity of the subject matter. The baseball scenes themselves are well done. The bats, balls, gloves and uniforms look like the equipment of that era and the ballparks are successful mock ups for the most part. There are even a couple of nifty athletic displays in the outfield that must have taken several takes to pull off. Overall, this is my second favorite baseball movie, next to "Bull Durham". Its a little light on some of the details of the conspiracy, but it makes up for it in other areas. It has some great music, some great sets, some solid acting and overall seems genuine and fair to all the major players in the conspiracy. Eight Men Out isn't perfect, but it isn't as flawed as Roger Ebert would have you believe. If you a fan of baseball in fact, I'd say its mandatory viewing.

I found this movie to be a major disappointment. Perhaps because it did a poor job of differentiating all the characters. I found it difficult to keep track of who was in on the take and who was not. Too many of the Sox looked too much alike to me. Perhaps because there were not sharply defined, clearly developed characters. It's a sad story, and this movie didn't do anything to make me feel for any of the characters who compromised themselves, even though some of them were played by very fine actors, such as Strathairn, who has shown in other movies - such as "Good Night and Good Luck" - what he can do with a well-written part. At two hours, it should have done more developing a few of the characters, and forgotten about some of the financial dealings. Keeping track of those financial transactions was also too complicated. Not a movie I would ever want to have to sit through again.

If not for tired clichés, I don't think Sayles would have had a script. "Make way for the Clean Sox!"; "Ya gotta pitch them one at a time." - spare me. Seems like all he did for research on the era was view old Hollywood baseball films and read anecdotes about the Black Sox. Another bad decision on the director's part is acting in his own film. His sarcastic singing in the train scene is the low part of the movie. The part about the selection of Landis as baseball commissioner is a farce. Could have been a great period piece about the times and America's early infatuation with the pastime. Instead, a cartoonish version of the story is presented. Sayles strikes out.