Eight Men Out (1988)

“You get out there, and the stands are full and everybody’s cheerin’. It’s like everybody in the world come to see you. And inside of that there’s the players, they’re yakkin’ it up. The pitcher throws and you look for that pill… suddenly there’s nothing else in the ballpark but you and it. Sometimes, when you feel right, there’s a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it’s going to go a long way. Damn, if you don’t feel like you’re going to live forever. ” – Buck Weaver

Number of Times Seen – Between 3-5 times (cable in the 80’s and 90’s and 21 Mar 2016)

Brief Synopsis – The story of the Black Sox Baseball scandal during the 1919 World Series

My Take on it – Being that Baseball season will begin next week, I have decided to watch a number of baseball movies in order to help get me psyched up for the only sport I actually enjoy. 🙂

This is a great story that is quite important if one looks at how baseball was and is perceived now nearly 100 years later.

Sports and gambling have always gone hand in hand and this movie emphasizes how much influence they both can have on each other.

The cast here is unbelievable when looking at it from a 2016 perspective; Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Christopher Lloyd, John Mahoney, David Strathairn, DB Sweeney, Gordon Clapp and Michael Rooker.

They help move the film along at a nice pace.

The problem here is that the story is very comprehensive and its hard for them to find a clear focus and instead they try to focus on too many aspects of the story at the same time.  This causes the film to lose some of its impact.

Because of the large list of characters, we get to know most of them only on a superficial level and therefore never reach a point where we can connect with them.

This is a great story that needs to be told because there really are so many important lessons to be learned from everything that happened.

It’s unfortunate that it was too short, had they expanded the running time, we would have gotten a potentially amazing film.

Bottom Line – Excellent cast helps this story move along nicely.  Tries too hard to focus on too many characters and too many conflicting storylines that it loses some of its impact.  We get to know the characters on a bit more than a superficial level, but never really reach a point where we can connect to them despite it being a great story that needed to be told like this. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Director John Sayles was contractually obligated to a running time under two hours. To inspire the cast to talk fast, he showed them the film City for Conquest (1940). The final cut of the film is 12 seconds under two hours. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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