Eight Men Out 20th Anniversary Editio (1988)

Los Angeles Times
"...Mesmerizing....A watershed American drama that's rich and clear..." 09/07/1988 p.C1

USA Today
"...You come out of OUT with a solid grasp of how eight members of the Chicago White Sox were enticed to throw the 1919 World Series..." 05/11/2001 p.12E

Total Film
"...The actor are, enjoyably, given the freedom to flesh out their characters..." 11/01/2000 p.120

Variety 9 of 10
Perhaps the saddest chapter in the annals of professional American sports is recounted in absorbing fashion in Eight Men Out...Story tells of how the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series in cahoots with professional gamblers, in what became known as the Black Sox Scandal...Based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 bestseller, John Sayles' densely packed screenplay lays out how eight players for the White Sox, who were considered shoo-ins to beat the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, committed an unthinkable betrayal of the national pastime by conspiring to lose the Fall Classic...The most compelling figures here are pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn), a man nearing the end of his career who feels the twin needs to insure a financial future for his family and take revenge on his boss, and Buck Weaver (John Cusack), an innocent enthusiast who took no cash for the fix but, like the others, was forever banned from baseball.
 
Chicago Sun-Times 6 of 10
"Eight Men Out" is an oddly unfocused movie made of earth tones, sidelong glances and eliptic conversations. It tells the story of how the stars of the 1919 Chicago White Sox team took payoffs from gamblers to throw the World Series, but if you are not already familiar with that story you're unlikely to understand it after seeing this film...It's an insider's movie, a baseball expert's film that is hard for the untutored to follow...Then there's a courtroom scene, which is less about baseball than about the standard cliches of all courtroom scenes. And the introduction of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was signed up as the first baseball commissioner in an attempt by the owners to clean up the image of their sport. Although the White Sox were found innocent in court, he banned them from big-league baseball all the same. His action was probably illegal, but it established a precedent that survived for many years, in which the government overlooked the way major league baseball established a monopoly and denied its player-employees their basic constitutional rights. All of this is true, but is it made clear in the movie? Not very. - Roger Ebert