Review of Eight Men Out (1988) by Michael V — 16 Feb 2013

Eight Men Out is the real life story of the 1919 Chicago White Sox's team that threw the world series for a big pay day. In the early 20th century, baseball players were barely payed enough money to live on, so when organized crime stepped in and offered a big pay day for throwing the 1919 World Series, half the team said yes.

The film Eight Men Out is based on the book by Eliot Asinof, the first to officially tell the story of what happened. Until this book, people knew the outcome, but not the particulars. While the book goes into great detail, the movie does not.

The film gives us the basics in a very simplistic form, in order to make it more dramatic, and that's the one part of this film I didn't really care for. The things I really wanted to know more about never seemed to materialize and a lot of what we saw in return was the Hollywood exaggeration effect.

Don't get me wrong though, the film was very entertaining as it showed a lot of the action on the field and touched on some aspects of the scandal. The acting was stellar and it was really fun to see Charlie Sheen and John Cusack right as they were first starting out.

As for the ending, well that was expected, but I still really enjoyed the sports action, back stories, and even the over the top dramatics surrounding the story. It may not be very in depth or even historically accurate, but seeing it again all these years later, I can now appreciate and understand why it is considered one of the top ten sports films of all time.