To fully appreciate this film, one should read the book (also called "Eight Men Out") and the movie follows the book quite well. I do not agree with your criticism of the excessive length. The fact that the movie shows the poor planning and uncertainty of the players to follow thru with the "fix" is shown in both the film and book. The film shows the games that were thrown, the ballplayers getting "stiffed" by the gamblers (mainly Abe Attel) and changing their minds to try and win the series (at least some of them did) when they didn't get the promised 20 grand per player like each was originally promised. Shortening the movie would leave out key parts from the true story and thankfully, this wasn't done. I think the actors do a real good job in the recreation of the baseball scenes and the middle of the movie which your critic bashes is unjustified. The only part of the movie that could be improved is showing that the trial took place towards the end of the following season with the "Black Sox" only a game out of 1st and after Chick Gandel taking the "lions share" of the payoff money $35,000 out of a total of $80,000 and retiring from baseball. The other players came back and the team was winning in spite of the ongoing investigation of the World Series scandal. The book goes into this much more in detail but do include this in the movie would have lengthened it at least another 45 minutes. This would have made it especially too long for critics (such as this site) who viewed the movie too long as it was.
Review of Eight Men Out
