Out the door, I don't think they treated Buck Weaver fairly in this...not that they made him into a villain like a lot of biopics do, but more that it didn't seem to be the story that I grew up with, being raised in the area where this was legend. Weaver wasn't really as innocent or as guilty as they made him out to be, he was more the catalyst than anything else.
That being said, it's still a movie about a legend. My dad told me the story, my grandfather told me the story, it was party of my childhood and we Cubs fans. So, walking into this, when I was 8, I already new how it was going to end, all the names involved...
...and reviewing it at almost 40, it hasn't changed at all, it's still the legend Chicago baseball fans grew up with, projected on the big screen, to sit back and take in as if you were watching the cautionary tail yourself.
And the thing is, it holds up to it. It holds up to the story of Shoeless Joe that inspired but the book (named after him) and the movie that would become Field of Dreams. It lives up to the stories that Grandpa and Dad told me from different points of view about where the guilt rested. It lives up to the stories of the darkest times during the greatest era in baseball history.
I'm writing this in 2018, the movie is set almost exactly a century ago and people are still telling stories of Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb (unfortunately slurring his name still), Babe Ruth, Buck Weaver, Honus Wagner,Cy Young, Lou Gehrig, and so many others. They became legends that Nolan Ryan could only dream of...and it was because the era was so important in the history of our national past time.
And Eight Men Out stands up to that legend and that mythological era where the gods played baseball.
It's really a must watch for any fan of the sport, and a must watch for any fan of movies in general simply because it lives up to all of that.
2023-01-14
