Eight Men Out (1988)
Directed by John Sayles
Buck Weaver and Hap Felsch are young idealistic players on the Chicago White Sox, a pennant-winning team owned by Charles Comiskey - a penny-pinching, hands-on manager who underpays his players and treats them with disdain. And when gamblers and hustlers discover that Comiskey's demoralized players are ripe for a money-making scheme, one by one the team members agree to throw the World Series. But when the White Sox are defeated, a couple of sports writers smell a fix and a national scandal explodes, ripping the cover off America's favorite pastime.
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What critics compared Eight Men Out to
Finally the mists and the cornstalks part, and a Christlike figure appears: Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta), baseball's ultimate outsider-hero, and the central figure in John Sayles' "Eight Men Out" and, a few years ago, "The Natural," where he's the inspiration for Robert Redford's Roy Hobbes.
"Eight Men Out" used the soiled Sox to underscore the modern decline of honor.
But then, I don't care about David Justice or Buck Weaver, and that doesn't stop Moneyball and Eight Men Out from being on my list of all-time favorite sports movies.
I have bagged on Sorkin in the past for his affectations, but the screenplay is moving when it needs to be (Beane's scenes with his daughter) and humorous in spots as well (most of the 2002 season), bringing to mind baseball movies like Eight Men Out.
Sayles is a wonderful storyteller, and many of his low-budget, independent films - "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Matewan," "Passion Fish," "The Brother From Another Planet," "Eight Men Out" and "City of Hope" - are filled with humor and wit, universal themes and realistic plotting, and despite some occasional dark subjects, heart and hope.