Eight Men Out

Director: John Sayles

1988 / 119min / 35mm

Working from Eliot Asinof’s 1963 nonfiction book of the same name, Sayles’s beautifully detailed period piece revisits the sporting news bombshell that shocked a nation: the agreement between several members of the Chicago White Sox and powerful gambling interests to throw the 1919 World Series, a national shame remembered by posterity as the Black Sox Scandal. A lucid dramatization of how corruption spread through the entire ecosystem around America’s pastime, handsomely lensed by cinematographer Robert Richardson and boasting a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble cast that puts Sayles regulars like David Strathairn and Gordon Clapp alongside rising stars John Cusack and Charlie Sheen.