Eight Men Out

Great retelling of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox World Series Scandal that almost broke baseball after World War 1.John Sayles brings his A game and demands nothing less from his impressive cast. The story draws heavily from Eliot Asinof's now less than fully reliable narrative on the event.The production design and attention to detail of the period are impressive. You can tell this was Sayles passion project and he gives a dryly humorous and affecting performance as real life sports journalist Ring Lardner who helped cover and later expose scandal.Great performances by all with the most hearthfelt from John Cusack and David Strathairn as 3rd baseman Buck Weaver and Ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte.The overarching narrative of the 1919 White Sox, the heavy World Series favorite, conspiring to throw the World Series for a big payday from Gamblers and Heavy underworld figures leaves many threads that are sometimes hard to follow, much like the real event.Multiple factions of gamblers, players, owners, and mobsters not to be triffled with make up fueding and dwindling loyalties that are only as solid as the money or lack there of, that one can produce.If there is a flaw it is what is not emphasized by the timeline of the story.Namely that 1919 was the first season following the First World War that America was seeking a return to normalcy with baseball as needed distraction. Then there is recent research that sheds light on the complexity of the story, namely the motives for the players to agree to the scandal, not as black and white as the film would have you believe.If you don't know the jist of the story's conclusion, you can watch this excellent 1988 baseball themed film that followed the popular Bull Durham and was forgotten after the classic 1989 Major League.As for a mixture of drama, action and heart, you won't find a better period baseball themed movie. Here it's available on Blu-ray with excellent new features with new documentaries and commentary with Sayles.

I don't haven't any idea of how accurate it is but it is good entertainment.

Simply outstanding Blu-ray rendition of probably the finest baseball movie ever made. I rank it ahead of even " 61* ", "A League of Their Own," and "Pride of the Yankees," the latter being a fine film about Lou Gehrig but weak in the baseball parts."Eight Men Out" is a period piece about the infamous fixing of the 1919 World Series by eight Chicago White Sox players, who did it with varying degrees of enthusiasm and reluctance, in cooperation with big-time gamblers who had approached them. This movie is based on the excellent 1963 Eliot Asinof book of the same name. The screenplay was written 11 years before this 1988 film was made, by director/writer John Sayles, who wrote a screenplay faithful to the true story. The resulting film is excellent at retelling the full story of how the 1919 "Black Sox" threw the World Series, as well as taking us back, quite well, to this era that opened the Roaring '20s. (This scandal damaged baseball hugely, and as I recall from my baseball research as a kid, Major League baseball came back primarily with the developing fame of a young Babe Ruth within a couple of years.) This film is true to the clothes, language, and cars of the times, generally, and also spends sufficient time on the all-important post-World Series discovery of the conspiracy, the hiring of well known Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis to investigate and pass judgment on this matter as the new lifetime Commissioner of Baseball, and takes us through that famous series of concluding events that resulted in lifetime bans from baseball for the eight players. (As I recall from my own childhood research, nobody got any "commutation of sentence" later on, either-- they were out for the rest of their lives as it turned out.)The film also contains scenes showing how different groups of the conspiring gamblers were double-crossing ONE ANOTHER as well as the players they were conspiring with. An interesting side element of which I had been previously unaware.The cast is absolutely top-drawer, including Charlie Sheen, D.B. Sweeney (both of whom were already good high school and college baseball players, respectively, in real life), John Cusack, Michael Lerner, David Strathairn, Christopher Lloyd, Clifton James, Michael Rooker, John Mahoney, Studs Terkel, and several other fine actors.As to the blu-ray picture quality--FANTASTIC! Looks absolutely PERFECT, ultra-sharp, with beautiful colors, clean and unflawed--this has just the most beautiful picture quality by far of any movie from the 1980s (or 1990s!) that I've ever seen, and I own a few hundred blu-rays. There is thankfully no phony grain added, it's just a very sharp, very clean picture. I had seen a beautiful print of this great film not long ago on the MGM-HD Channel, and was hoping the eventual Blu-ray would be as good-- and not adding in phony grain to degrade the picture quality, which these small Blu-ray production houses tend to do. But, this Blu-ray turned out even slightly BETTER than that excellent MGM-HD Channel presentation. I also have the DVD, and this Blu-ray's picture quality is far better, as one would have hoped.There is also an extremely good "making of" documentary from the 2007 DVD included on the Blu-ray, about an hour long, primarily with director-writer John Sayles, also actor D.B. Sweeney (who played Shoeless Joe Jackson), and, to a lesser extent, a couple of other actors in the film. This documentary is extremely informative about the movie-making aspects of this film from the development stages, also including interesting discussions of the training in baseball of the actors, and why doing the baseball parts very well was important to the filmmakers. The other extra is a good trailer, also in very sharp picture-quality. Oddly, there are no subtitles available, not even in English.Olive Films has produced the nicest Blu-ray of theirs that I've ever seen, most especially in regard to the spectacular Blu-ray picture quality, which is superior to that of virtually any other Blu-ray I've seen out of 300+ Blu-rays-- and without a doubt vs. 1980s and 1990s films on Blu-ray.Highly recommended Blu-ray release!

I purchased my first copy of this DVD in January 2009 , and due to a scratch on the disc purchased another copy in October 2019. That underscores just how valuable the film is to me. While I am not necessarily a baseball (or any sports fan), I am a history buff and this piqued my interest.Story line aside, I am a dyed-in-the-wool John Sayles fan, and although this is one of his earlier works, his writing and directing are as distinctive and recognizable as are those in every one of his films. He also has a role in this film (as Ring Lardner), which is another feature of most of his movies.One of the things that keeps drawing me back to rewatching this movie for the umpteenth time is how the era is captured. I felt as though I was peering through a time machine back to 1919. The scenes were like old photos from the era, and even the vernacular was true to the era. Of course, there is a certain rhythm to Sayles' writing regardless of the story, and while the words spoken by the actors may be a bit archaic, the cadence is pure Sayles.The cast, more than a few of whom show up in other Sayles films, were believable. I won't single anyone out for particularly convincing performances because it would take up a few more paragraphs. I will say that having Studs Terkle, cast as Hugh Fullerton who uncovered the 1919 scandal, was a great tough. Terkle was seven years old when the events depicted took place, so remembered the era and events.If you love history, and especially if you want to be treated to the 1919 scandal in a fairly accurate manner with all the backstory and nuances included, this is a worthwhile film.

bit disappointed felt subject could have been covered better boringly slow and whole production average

great film and great service

Received in excellent order and an excellent film to brighten up the day, so thank you very much for the good service

Very pleased

I was pleased with the film, which arrived in good time and in perfect condition. Very good.