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Eight Men Out
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by MGM (Video & DVD)
Sales Rank: 10893
Price: $14.95
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Eliot Asinof's detailed book <I>Eight Men Out</I> illustrates how the system of American sports collapsed in 1919, the year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series. Filmmaker John Sayles worked on his script years before the 1988 film (or before he had the rights to make the film) as a labor of love. Sayles's adaptation proves one can make a historically accurate film in the day and age of artistic license. And what a story. Although many know about the "Black Sox," made famous--again--in the 1989 hit film <I>Field of Dreams</I>, the details of the saga are far less known. The center of <I>Dreams</I>, Shoeless Joe Jackson (portrayed correctly by D.B. Sweeney as illiterate and left-handed in <I>Eight</I>), is not the core of this film; it's ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte (Sayles favorite David Strathairn), who took the money, and third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack), who did not. The film fits nicely into Sayles's (<I>Lone Star</I>) strong suit: the ensemble drama. We are introduced to bickering owners, famous crooks, high-minded judges, lowlife gangsters, investigative reporters (played by Studs Terkel and Sayles himself), and, most of all, players who are at the breaking point when it comes to low salaries and degrading rewards. While some may feel the film is not as visceral as it should be, there is a great amount of verisimilitude when watching finely tuned athletes telling their bodies to play poorly--heartbreak on the nation's diamond. Beautifully detailed (like Sayles's previous labor-drama, <I>Matewan</I>), <I>Eight Men Out</I> gives us powerful lessons in which everyone lost: players, gamblers, and especially the fans who love the game. <I>--Doug Thomas</I>
Viewer Reviews
Eight Men Out tells the story about one of baseball's darkest days; the 1919 World Series scandal. Eight baseball players from the White Sox team decide to throw the World Series due to the own of the team poor treatment to the players. Though one of them, Buck Weaver, defends his innocents. The movie seems to be true to fact, but it suggests it all took place in the same year. The players were not banned from baseball til the end of the 1920. If nothing else, like the period clothing back then.
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Eight Men Out
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