Eight Men Out

I have been lucky enough to grow up in the great state of Illinois, home of some of the best stories in American sports.  I came of age in a time where the Bears put up arguably the most dominant single season in the NFL, the Bulls had two three-peat championship runs, and the eternally cursed Cubs and White Sox continued to break hearts across the nation (until those bastard Sox actually won the World Series...grumble, grumble, Cubs fan).  This past Spring, I was lucky enough to get to visit the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and it was pretty awesome.  I won't lie, I teared up on a few occasions.  This weekend, I was very happy to learn that Chicago Cubs great (and one of the worst --- but lovable --- baseball announcers ever), Ron Santo, will finally be inducted into the Hall.  That got me thinking of other Chicago greats who have yet to receive baseball's highest honor.  Of course, that lead me to Eight Men Out, the supposed "inside story" about how the 1919 White Sox intentionally lost the World Series and conspired with professional gamblers to make a profit on their loss.

Sorry, wrong Black Sox movie

The owner of the White Sox in 1919 was Charles Comiskey (Clifton James), and the man was a cheapskate.  He had a world-class team, but insisted on paying them as little as humanly possible.  For instance, the ace of his pitching staff, Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) had a clause in his contract that gave him a bonus if he earned 30 wins; Comiskey had him benched for the last few weeks of the regular season because he reached 29.  When the team was offered bonuses for winning the American League title, Comiskey instead gave them only cheap champagne.  Basically, Comiskey was a big enough douche to deserve having his stadium renamed "The Cell." 

When the gambling syndicate run by Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner) learns of the discontent on the heavily favored Sox, he makes an offer (through proxies, of course) to select players; if they lose the World Series on purpose, they will be paid far more handsomely than if they actually win.

Maybe then, they could afford some shirts that fit

Some players, like Cicotte, Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker), and Swede Risberg (Don Harvey) go along with the plan willingly.  Buck Weaver (John Cusack) doesn't agree to go along with the plot, but he doesn't report it, either.  The team's star, Shoeless Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) seems too dumb to understand any innuendo or threats, and plays hard and gets paid.  How does the Series turn out?  Well, it's ancient history now, but Eight Men Out plays it for all the drama it can.  But win or lose, the suspiciously poor play from the White Sox will have repercussions for the team and all of baseball for years to come.

Example: chaw is deemed mandatory for jerkwads

If you are unfamiliar with the story of the 1919 "Black Sox," then you're basically out of luck.  While Eight Men Out does kind of touch on why they may or may not have thrown the Series, it isn't exactly the easiest movie to follow if you are not a baseball fan.  Chances are, you will not realize the significance of who the characters are; the cast is vast and recognizable, but there are darn few introductions for them.  I would have loved to hear an announcer explain who these guys were, or have one of the sportswriters (who actually play essential --- but underdeveloped --- roles in this drama) give the audience the lowdown on some of these guys.  The script explains that Shoeless Joe is one of the greatest players ever, but why?  It's not shown on-camera.  As for the others, the script doesn't provide nearly as much. 

Weaver could have held a boombox over his head, for all this script cared

That's not to say that the performances were poor.  John Cusack, despite being a lifelong Cubs fan, is very good as the earnest Buck Weaver, and his protests and effort are what makes this plot chug along.  D.B. Sweeney was convincingly dumb as Shoeless Joe, but he lacked presence on the screen, making him seem a pale shadow of Roy Hobbs, a fictional character based on the man.  David Stathairn gave the most impressive performance, one that reeked of conflict and pride.  Michael Rooker and Don Harvey were fine as the detestable bad guys, although I would have liked maybe a moment of hesitation before they jumped on the "let's lose the World Series" bandwagon. 

Above: the most emotive Rooker gets in this film

Charlie Sheen plays a surprisingly small role in this, especially when you consider his starring roles in Platoon and Wall Street only a few years prior.  John Mahoney, who was apparently never young, was pretty good as the trusting White Sox manager.  Christoper Lloyd and Richard Edson (the parking attendant in another Chicago classic, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) are okay as small-time grifters, but neither is utilized much in this movie.  Director John Sayles cast himself (and Chicago institution Studs Terkel) as one of the two baseball newspaper columnists who helped break this story, although their contributions in this film are underplayed.

I really wish this scene was a highlight

When I was seven years-old, baseball was all I could think about.  I sponged up knowledge like...well, a very absorbent material.  While old age and beer have killed off some of my brain cells, I still retain much of my historical baseball knowledge.  Rewatching Eight Men Out should have been an emotional trip down memory lane for me, but it wasn't.  John Sayles directed his actors well enough, but he failed as a writer to make me care about any of them.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Eight Men Out is its soft focus.  Is this the tale of the entire 1919 Sox team, or is it about the innocents who were unfairly banned from the sport?  The point of view character is, at times, Buck Weaver, but who the hell remembers him?  This movie was made seventy years after Weaver was expelled from the sport, and occasionally showing him as the main character isn't enough to generate sympathy for him.  The most famous player on the team, Shoeless Joe Jackson, is relegated to a very minor role in the script; that's like making Pride of the Yankees with Lou Gehrig as the fifth-billed character.  Who is this movie supposed to be about?  The entire team?  Then Sayles should have explained the characters better in the script.  Shoeless Joe?  Then he should have played a more important role.  Weaver?  Then the focus should have stayed with him as he struggled to succeed despite his teammates.

There are many more problems that the focus.  Even with my near-encyclopedic baseball knowledge, I failed to recognize many of the characters in this film.  That's a pretty big problem; if I can't pick out some of these players, how can a casual viewer hope to understand what's going on?  The script is full of elliptical conversations that allude to the gambling conspiracy, but rarely acknowledge it outright.  As much as I appreciate scripts that assume the viewers are clever, the details of this story are left fairly obtuse.

...like whatever he is rubbing on the ball

Another problem I had with Eight Men Out is that it, really, isn't a baseball movie.  The script is too lazy to focus on any one game, so it instead allows every play shown on-screen to be of major importance; batters hit the first pitch every time, and pitchers give up crucial runs with every throw.  This is a movie about the scandal.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of baseball in-between the conception of the idea and the execution, and both suffer for it.  This isn't a bad movie, though.  Sayles clearly cared about this team and this story, but his passion was executed poorly.  At best, I have to say that this is a mediocre movie about a potentially fantastic film concept.

On a personal note, as a baseball fan with his head in the past (my prized baseball possession is a Ryne Sandberg 1960s-era throwback jersey), I believe that all eight men implicated in the Black Sox scandal should be eligible for the Hall of Fame in 2019.  I think a 100-year ban is more than enough; the only two that sportswriters would even consider inducting would be Shoeless Joe and Buck Weaver, both of whom had a stellar, error-free World Series performance.  And baseball writers are notoriously vindictive, so if they forgive the players, so should the sport.  At least that way, we could expect to stop hearing Pete Rose's whining in about seventy-five years.  Besides, the commissioner that banned the 1919 Sox was a total bastard; he allowed Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker to keep playing after reports of them gambling on the sport surfaced.  Come on, Major League Baseball!  Act like the museum you are an induct the players that deserve it; if you want to hold them accountable for shady actions, include a steroids or gambling section and let the fans determine their legacy!  ...and I'm off my soapbox.

The Man With the Golden Gun

There aren't many movies that are confident enough to open with a sequence that flaunts a character's superfluous third nipple.  Aside from possibly Total Recall (for obvious paper mache reasons), The Man With the Golden Gun is in a non-pornographic class of its own.  This is the ninth overall film in the James Bond franchise, but only the second with Roger Moore as the titular hero.  That's not to say that Moore was young --- he was 47 when this was released --- but he was still finding his voice for the character.  Hey, Moore...here's a hint: be awesome!

British secret agent James Bond (Roger Moore) is called into his superior's office one day and is taken off his current case.  What was he working on?  A solution to the energy crisis.  Well.  Thank goodness we took care of that way back in 1974, so we don't have to deal with it today, eh?  Bond has been taken off the case because a golden bullet was mailed to MI6 with his agent number: 007.  This is a big deal because only one man in the whole world is known to use gold bullets, and that is the international assassin known as Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee).  Nobody knows what he looks like, where he lives, or what job he will do next.  All that is known is that he has a third nipple and is one of the most dangerous men alive with a gun in his hand.  Naturally, Bond decides to track down this Scaramanga.  While this does end up being a fairly globe-trotting event, at its core, The Man With the Golden Gun is about James Bond facing off against one particularly challenging foe.  Who will win in a duel to the death, Bond or the titular character?  Okay, there's not a whole lot of suspense, given that there have been another dozen Bond movies after this one, but it's still an interesting idea.

"Now...look at the camera, and say 'Charlie's Angels!'"

I don't know your personal feelings about the many actors who have played James Bond, but I have always felt that Roger Moore did a good job, despite playing the role in the ridiculous 70s.  Moore's performance in this film is quite a bit rougher than I am used to seeing in a Bond movie.  He lies to a child, slaps a woman around for information, and mentally tortures one of the two Bond girls in the movie.  I'm okay with a secret agent with a license to kill being kind of a dick, but there were a few moments where Moore was less suave and more mean, which didn't really fit the tone of the movie.  Christopher Lee, though, was pretty entertaining.  Lee makes a great villain in any film, but he managed to take a pretty stupid character --- he wants to challenge James "Always Wins" Bond with a gun made of gold, one of the less practical metals for weapons --- and make him very cool.  His character has his own island, a midget butler, and a gun that disassembles into a zippo, but Lee never less the silliness of the character affect his performance.  He is serious, competitive, and cold.

Since this is a James Bond movie, it has a pretty substantial supporting cast.  The regular MI6 people show up --- Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Bernard Lee (M), and Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny) --- and they do their typical tour of duty.  The Bond girls in this film are Maud Adams as Scaramanga's girlfriend and Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, Bond's assistant in Asia.  Adams is okay, showing a surprising amount of depth (sometimes she looks upset, or even uncomfortable!) for a Bond girl.

Rubbing a gun all over your lover's face: not as sexy as it sounds.

The true Bond girl in this film, though, is Ekland.  She's surprisingly naive for a character that is interested in Bond, but Ekland plays that naivety quite naturally, if only because she has mastered the vacant stare.  And, while pretty ladies are always nice to watch, this wouldn't be a Bond movie without a memorable henchman for Scaramanga.  That role is filled admirably by his midget/dwarf/vertically-smooshed manservant, Nick Nack (Herve Villechaize).  While not physically imposing in the least, Nick Nack's role in things is bizarre enough to keep you interested.  The only other supporting cast member worth mentioning is the unfortunate inclusion of Clifton James as Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who was in Live and Let Die.  Pepper is one of those characters that is supposed to be comic relief, and yet makes no jokes at all in the film.  He just Foghorn Leghorns his way through some atrocious dialogue and manages to not get struck by any stray bullets in the movie.

Roger Moore with his leading ladies.

This was Guy Hamilton's fourth and final time directing a Bond movie, and his second with Moore in the lead.  As much as I like the overall idea of a villain being so bad-ass as to court a duel with a secret agent, I didn't particularly care for Hamilton's direction here.  I thought he gave Moore too rough of an edge at times, the plot was pretty slow for a Bond movie, and his attempts at capturing humor on film were just pitiful.

The sound effect for this shot was a slide whistle.  Seriously.

The inclusion of J.W. Pepper was completely unnecessary and had no payoff.  The scene where Bond almost chokes on a belly ornament (and then alludes to crapping it out later) makes Bond look like an amateur.  And the post-climax action scene was Bond vs. the midget.  What the hell, man?  This is bush league stuff, not bad-assery in any form!

Oh, and Bond gets protected by schoolgirls, too.

That's not to say that the film is without merit, of course.  Even when he's being a little extra rough, Roger Moore is a charmer.  That doesn't explain how he gets away with the infamous Goodnight closet scene, though.  That's the scene where Bond is preparing to romance Goodnight, but shoves her into a closet when Scaramanga's girl comes a-calling; he sexes up the bad girl, leaving Goodnight to listen in the closet.  And he still managed to romance her later in the film!  Christopher Lee was the best Bond villain in years, even if his character wasn't terribly logical.  I remembered this as one of the better Bonds, but it's really not.  Sure, Moore's solid, Lee is good, and Villechaize is short, but there's an awful lot about this movie that just doesn't work:

• When Bond asks who would want to pay Scaramanga's $1 million fee to kill him, M suggests "humiliated tailors."  Huh?
• Scaramanga's home has two walls covered with mounted insects behind glass.  It's never mentioned, but it's a weird detail.
• Where did the guitar go in the James Bond theme?  They replaced it with horns!
• An international custom weapons dealer allows Bond to turn his own display merchandise against him.  Is this his first day, or something?
• How did this movie get a PG rating?  There is the requisite naked silhouette girl in the opening credits, a topless (with long hair) waitress, the naked Chew Mee in a swimming pool, and Maud Adams naked behind shower glass.
• Bond only sleeps with two women in the film.  One of them has sex with him as a form of payment.

This is a very unique Bond movie, though.  No other film has such a clear-cut course of action for Bond, and that change of pace adds variety to the series as a whole.  Of course, with the obvious climax set up in the opening scenes, there isn't a whole lot to excite you as you wait for the finale.  Yes, Bond does some kung-fu and goes on a **sigh** crappy boat chase, but that's nowhere near enough.  This movie has no twists or turns, and no suspense.  Christopher Lee's performance is all that keeps this movie from being subpar.