I like John Sayles, but I think I know too much about the Black Sox scandal to tolerate the movie’s necessary compression of so many complicated issues and minor events into a neat two-hour package.   He did the best he could, but it’s just too much information, and some of the casting is odd, too.   David Strathairn is a wonderful actor, but as Eddie Cicotte, he just looks wrong, and I know they wanted to give Buck Weaver’s big speeches to a kid who could handle them, but John Cusack is too frail-looking for the part, and it fell flat for me.   And D.B. Sweeney as Shoeless Joe…well, casting that part is problematic, just generally, and I guess you do the best you can.   Liotta was not ideal, either, to my mind.   I feel like you need a guy who’s more of a physical lummox, and who’s very internal, not showing much to the world about what, if anything, he’s thinking.   It has nothing to do with Jackson’s inability to read; it’s more that, at that time, with his background, he wouldn’t have worn any of these agonies on his face, and Sweeney plays him too moistly.   Overall, it’s not a bad movie, but if you don’t know anything about the events it portrays, it’s probably very confusing, and if you do, it seems slight.   (1/31/04)

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