In this summer of baseball movies, independent filmmaker John Sayles has hit a home run with his newest release, 'Eight Men Out.'
The film, which chronicles the Chicago 'Black Sox' scandal of 1919, follows the box-office hit 'Bull Durham' and the recently released 'Stealing Home.'
But 'Eight Men Out' is not as much a summer entertainment as it is a slice of American sports history, rich with nostalgia and irony. Viewers looking for a romantic movie, sex or violence can stay home.
Based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 novel of the same name, 'Eight Men Out' is the story of how eight White Sox players, in the prime of their careers, threw the World Series for payments averaging $5,000 per player.
Sayles' portrait is a sympathetic one, showing how the players were vastly underpaid, how many did not comprehend what they were doing, and how they paid for their deeds by being forced to give up what they held dearest in life -- playing professional baseball.
The movie is the biggest project -- carrying the biggest budget - that Sayles has undertaken in his 10-year film career. The $6.5 million film, backed by Orion films is still modest by Hollywood standards but far outdistances the $60,000 spent on his first film, 'Return of the Secaucus Seven.'
Like most Sayles films, the movie is a team effort. However, a larger budget allowed for larger salaries which in turn paid for the kind of names that audiences recognize.
Character actor Clifton James plays a convincingly greedy White Sox owner Charles Comiskey; Charlie Sheen of 'Platoon' and 'Wall Street' fame has a small role as one of the ballplayers; and John Mahoney, the womanizing college professor in 'Moonstruck,' plays White Sox manager, 'Kid' Gleason, who built the team only to watch it self-destruct.
David Strathairn, one of Sayles' close friends and a regular in his movies, turns in a star performance as Eddie Cicotte, the straight-arrow pitcher who joins the scam in order to send his daughters to college. John Cusack is adorable as third baseman 'Buck' Weaver, who finds he can't bring himself to play bad baseball.
As with each of his movies, Sayles never turns down a chance to appear onscreen and here the 37-year-old writer-director almost steals the show with his portrayal of newspaper columnist Ring Lardner.
Aside from its moving study of greed, corruption and loss, the film provides a wonderful glimpse at life inthe post-World War I era.
No detail appears to have been overlooked right down to the homburgs, ticker tapes, hand-turned scoreboards, smokey nightclubs and mahogany-laden men's clubs -- where bettors 'watched' the game on a board as a croupier moved cardboard players from base to base.
For even more realism, Ken Berry, a former player for the Yankees and White Sox, was brought in to 'coach' the cast in the different ways of throwing and hitting a baseball they way they did back then.
Jaunty ragtime music by Mason Daring keeps the pace up and helps glue the scenes together.
Viewers shouldn't expect to leave 'Eight Men Out' laughing or elated -- but they should expect plenty of food for thought.
---
This movie is rated PG.
