sireelknight-935-419657 I would have rated the movie a lot higher if it had been labeled 'fiction', but as a biopic it's absolute garbage. I would love to see a serious movie on the 'real' Ty Cobb.

martinmcdonough A movie like this one just goes to show that if anyone involved in making this movie had bothered to do a shred of research into the life of Cobb, they would have quickly realized that Al Stump fabricated the vast majority of what has become the unfortunate long held beliefs about Cobb. It's too bad that no one looked any further than his book and just ran with it as Gospel. Al Stump has been largely discredited due to these fabrications, false statements, forgeries and sensationalizing events in Cobb's life to cast him in an unflattering light. This movie hones in on them and magnifies them. To start with the small stuff, Cobb was not, as commonly believed, a dirty player - and this is according to men he played against. He was tough, rough, and an agitator, but he never "sharpened his spikes" as legend (and the film) attest. Nor did he pistol-whip blacks for no reason. Nor was he a raging racist (he said that blacks should be allowed to play ball wholeheartedly). If you want to know the true Ty Cobb, the one that Al Stump threw into the dustbin in favor of his fabrication, read "A Terrible Beauty" by Charles Leerhsen. HE did some actual research. It's a shame that people as bright as Ron Shelton (director) and Ken Burns (Baseball mini-series) never took the time to investigate any of Stump's wild accusations.

richard-1787 I don't know that I understand the point of a movie like this.Ty Cobb played professional baseball from 1905-1928, during which time he was, by anyone's reckoning, one of the all-time greats, accomplishing things no one had done before, and few since. He lived another 33 years after retiring, during which he did nothing that millions of other men his age haven't done. He died at the age of 74, evidently a bitter and lonely old man.I confess that I don't see the point of making a movie about the last, bitter years of such a bitter old man when they hold nothing of exceptional interest. Yes, Tommy Lee Jones does a fine job of playing a bitter old man, but frankly, why should I care? This movie won't teach you much about Ty Cobb, or baseball. It will show you yet another bitter old man, but it won't make you empathize with him. Do you really want to sit through 2 hours of that?

russianberserker Ty Cobb is, by far, the most interesting and belligerently insane athlete to ever live. His baseball career was unparalleled in absurd statistics, brilliant strategy, and pure unadulterated violence. Every game he played in was a spectacle in human ability and cruelty. So of course, the film about him deals with none of that, instead focusing on the writing of his biography by author Al Stump. Now this isn't such a horrible idea in theory, as Cobb himself slid even further into paranoid dementia as years progressed and the stories of his crazed outbursts even as a senior are shocking even by today's desensitized standards. But instead of focusing on these events, which I figure were simply too interesting, the film is a pseudo fictionalized road film with a clichéd plot that will cause any knowledgeable Cobb fan to cry vinegar tears. Tommy Lee Jones does quite well as a crotchety Cobb, but somehow manages to overplay his cartoon supervillainy. Most stories about Cobb are barely believable, but to make him even crazier seems both impossible and unnecessary. Robert Wuhl, portraying the writer Al Stump, is a dark vortex of non-talent. He sucks the life out of every scene, trying to make this film his own Nagasaki. There is a reason we never see him as a leading man anymore (Arli$$ does not count. It's barely a show). Even the played out, inevitable "role reversal" of Cobb and Stump by the end is made even worse by his pure inability to utter lines that don't sound akin to a bottom shelf book on tape narration voice. For all the awful writing and bland film-making on display, there is one sequence which stands out as so far superior to the rest of this failure that accepting it's from the same film is near impossible. A hyper stylized flashback sequence displaying Cobb's overpowering psychology and brutal athleticism while actually playing the game of baseball is pure brilliance. The camera moves in bizarre fashion and the whole event seems like a dream due to the unique playing style of the monster Cobb. Every slide, hit, and tackle are rendered even more forceful due to enhanced sound, and Tommy Lee Jones OWNS the intensity of the master player. It makes the viewer drool over the possibilities of a true biopic of Cobb in his prime with the same actor. It's worth watching the film for this incredible few minutes alone, just to see what could have been. I may be slightly unfair to this film due to my own knowledge of Ty Cobb and wanting it to be something it isn't, but to make such boring, neutered movie about this maniac is nonsensical. I'm glad Ron Shelton's career has slid ever since.