Richly evocative, this is a stark reminder that the color of money ultimately cannot compete with the thrill of victory.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 5, 2024

It’s Sayles’ multi-faceted approach – switching from the players to the gamblers to the administrators to the journalists – that really gets you hooked, while the rat-a-tat dialogue is up there with the best of Robert Altman and Aaron Sorkin.

| Aug 25, 2023

...benefits from its inherently compelling subject matter and raft of compelling, eye-catching performances...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 20, 2023

Another great, measured slice of Americana from John Sayles, here adapting Eliot Asinof’s book about the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

| Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

Robert Richardson, who'd go on to shoot nearly all of Quentin Tarantino's movies, including "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood," crafts compelling visuals, and Sayles' writing, as always, is major league.

| Apr 2, 2020

Although Eight Men Out is a serious, sober effort... I found it neither clumsy nor doctrinaire.

| Aug 31, 2018

Aside from its moving study of greed, corruption and loss, the film provides a wonderful glimpse at life inthe post-World War I era.

| Aug 23, 2016

The tone of Eight Men Out is reminiscent of the droll irony of John Huston's considerations of the vanity of human wishes and the corrupting power of money.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 6, 2014

The light shed on this dark period of sports history makes Eight Men Out essential moviegoing. But what makes it heartbreaking is watching the toll taken on champions betraying their talent on a field of honor.

Full Review | May 6, 2014

Unfortunately, the movie's didacticism returns in the lengthy and somewhat tedious courtroom ending dealing with the aftermath of the Series.

| May 6, 2014

It's a sad and compelling piece that is totally convincing and doesn't require a knowledge of baseball.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 6, 2014

Does a fine job in getting to the details of the baseball scandal.

| Original Score: B | Apr 19, 2013

Sayles deftly re-creates the forces that drove men at top of their class on the diamond to take bribes: big-time crime in Chicago and heartless management in the head office.

| Mar 20, 2013

It's a period re-created with a whoosh of energy and a redeeming vein of irony.

| Mar 20, 2013

The ensemble performances are of such a uniformly high caliber that our interest in the story never wavers.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 20, 2013

Eight Men Out never gathers much authority; the old themes have been hung on a rickety structure that constantly threatens to collapse.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 20, 2013

The story is lumpy in spots, but fine performances and expressive camera work carry the day.

| Mar 20, 2013

In an ensemble movie like this one, an actor who grabs too much of the limelight can throw everything out of focus. The cast Sayles has assembled understands the value of teamwork.

| Mar 20, 2013

A treat for baseball fans but might bore others.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2011

In 1988, writer-director John Sayles made his most ambitious film to date with this intelligent chronicle of the 1919 sports scandal, cast with some of the best actors around (Strathairn, Cusack, Sweeney, Sheen).

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 17, 2009