Think the 1919 World Series ‘Black’ Sox scandal is ‘can’t-miss’ film material? Think again. (And it’s not that John Sayles’ well-intentioned work has aged badly, it flopped on release.) Though made with the admirable intention of avoiding standard baseball tropes & clichés as much as possible, Sayles doesn’t come up with good substitutions, so plot & characters are left dangling in the wind. And a touristy quality in period detail has the mostly fresh-faced cast struggling to make you believe they might be wearing circa 1919 itchy wool undergarments. These hardened ball players, horribly mistreated by their ogre-like owner, could pass more easily for Mercury 7 astronauts. And the tricky split focus between players, reporters, gangsters & corporate big-shots, positioned inside a complicated story structure (a three act World Series/then newspaper montage investigation/an abbreviated three act trial/then epilogue) defeats Sayles as stylist. While Sayles-the-didact is unable to find a spot for a lecture on, say, the struggle between labor and capital in early Major League Baseball. The film begs for an epic vision, for the long view, but Sayles settles for relief story-pitching and a line-up of lousy accents that miss the mark on Boston, Chicago & New York.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Sayles is okay as sportswriter Ring Lardner, but iconic Chicago newsman Studs Terkel is a delight & real-deal eccentric as fellow sports-writer Hugh Fullerton.
LINK: Added 10/10/19 – Turns out, almost everything we thought we knew about this scandal is wrong all the way down the line-up! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/black-sox-scandal-1919.html
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