Product Description

John Cusack (Con Air) and Charlie Sheen (Major League) lead a "superb ensemble of actors" (Newsweek) delivering "striking performances" (The New York Times) in this "mesmerizing story" (Los Angeles Times) about the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal, certainly one of the saddest chapters in the annals of professional sports. Buck Weaver (Cusack) and Hap Felsch (Sheen) are young idealistic players with 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21159 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 2001-05-08
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.com
Eliot Asinof's detailed book Eight Men Out illustrates how the system of American sports collapsed in 1919, the year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series. Filmmaker John Sayles worked on his script years before the 1988 film (or before he had the rights to make the film) as a labor of love. Sayles's adaptation proves one can make a historically accurate film in the day and age of artistic license. And what a story. Although many know about the "Black Sox," made famous--again--in the 1989 hit film Field of Dreams, the details of the saga are far less known. The center of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson (portrayed correctly by D.B. Sweeney as illiterate and left-handed in Eight), is not the core of this film; it's ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte (Sayles favorite David Strathairn), who took the money, and third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack), who did not. The film fits nicely into Sayles's (Lone Star) strong suit: the ensemble drama. We are introduced to bickering owners, famous crooks, high-minded judges, lowlife gangsters, investigative reporters (played by Studs Terkel and Sayles himself), and, most of all, players who are at the breaking point when it comes to low salaries and degrading rewards. While some may feel the film is not as visceral as it should be, there is a great amount of verisimilitude when watching finely tuned athletes telling their bodies to play poorly--heartbreak on the nation's diamond. Beautifully detailed (like Sayles's previous labor-drama, Matewan), Eight Men Out gives us powerful lessons in which everyone lost: players, gamblers, and especially the fans who love the game. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

Black Eye in Baseball
Eight Men Out tells the story about one of baseball's darkest days; the 1919 World Series scandal. Eight baseball players from the White Sox team decide to throw the World Series due to the own of the team poor treatment to the players. Though one of them, Buck Weaver, defends his innocents. The movie seems to be true to fact, but it suggests it all took place in the same year. The players were not banned from baseball til the end of the 1920. If nothing else, like the period clothing back then.

If You Are A Baseball Or Movie Fan
It is hard to believe that this movie is 20 years old already, it seems like yesterday that it was released, and this disc does it justice.

If you are a baseball fan of any level you probably know of the infamous Black Sox Scandel and the "fix" of the World Series, which rocked the baseball world much like the steroid issue today.

In Eight Men Out, the scandel is chronicled in a first class movie. The acting is superb throughout and the events surrounding the "fix" are well done. When the scandel is placed in the context of how baseball was during those times - players were far from having any power with respect to the owners - the nuances of how and why people reacted the way they did becomes more telling. Not as a justification for their actions, but more for how it could happen.

Even if you are not a baseball fan, this movie stands on its own and the collector's edition is one worth having.

Great Movie
This is a great movie!
We watched it as a family. It has great lessons throughout. It's great to have a film that depicts such a pivotal event in sports history with such a great storyline- even better that it's not rated R!