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Rating:  - A tremendously acted portrait of a first-class Prick, Ty Cobb
Talk about films that are totally unsentimental about their lead character!!! COBB is just that.
Baseball great Tyrus Raymond Cobb, by his own admission, was a prick his entire life. Ron Shelton, in his written and directed biopic of the "Georgia Peach" does nothing to dispel this claim. Tommy Lee Jones attacks this role with such ferociousness that I doubt that anyone could like this character. Cobb was arguably the best ball player of his time. He was generally hated by all that came in contact with him. Jones plays him to a tee. Cobb is totally repelling and there is not but possibly a half ounce of sympathy for him in this film. This is the film's biggest problem: who can sit and watch total narcissistic behavior for 129 minutes??? Even amidst his totally insane and irrational behavior, there are some brilliant comic moments, but not enough to lift this film from the relentless heavy-handedness. After a while you have simply seen enough and want to walk out, never to return. There is nothing that made me respect or care for Ty Cobb in the slightest. Cobb was a bully, a manipulator, a cheat, a liar, a carouser, a drunk, a wife-beater who was forsaken by his five children and more. No excuse can be given for this kind of behavior no matter how "great" the man.
This film did strike a very personal chord in me. My own father was a "Ty Cobb." My father did all and was even more than Cobb was. He, like Cobb, died alone,rejected by his family and friends in his old age. After 84 years, only six people attended his funeral, and only out of some weird obligatory feeling. So, in brief, COBB reflected much of what I knew to be true in my own experience from my life. NOT A PLEASANT WATCH FOR SOME!
Elliot Goldenthal's original soundtrack is appropriately riveting and truly is an asset in the fast moving scenes!
Is COBB a well done film? Absolutely.Is it stylish and clever? Absolutely. Does it drag on? Absolutely. Did I learn something? Absolutely. Have I seen enough, though? Absolutely.
Rating:  - A Great Baseball Film
Even if you're not a baseball fan, this is a helluva great film that really gets inside a complex human being who just happens to be the best baseball player of all-time.
Tommy Lee Jones has never been better and Robert Wuhl gives an outstanding performance that gets short shrift to Jones' sublime turn.
This movie never gets mentioned when they compile the list of best sport's movies but "Cobb" is a terrific film that is hands down a better film then "The Natural." (A highly overrated movie).
This is probably the second best baseball film of all-time after "Field of Dreams."
Rating: - For BB fans a strong 4; casual sports fans a 3.
Though some people consider Cobb the greatest, I don't recall ever seeing any name higher than Mr. Ruth in any book, on any list, with the exception of one book which places Willie Mays at the top. So with that statement, there should be many sports fans and historains who would want to check this movie/DVD out (though it's a little light on actual baseball *playing* - too bad, because the photography/camera work is terrific).
Tommy Lee Jones plays the part as if he's auditioning for the part of Mephistofolies; or Sweeney Todd; it's surely "over the top" but he dominates every single scene he's in, actually over-running (with no sharpened spikes) Mr. Rhul, playing the (now) legendary sports writer Al Stump. In "real life", it seems Stump had to deal with a relatively tame but decidedly moody lion, in motel rooms, in banquet halls, in lounges, all over the place.
The movie portrays a somewhat self-righteous writing genuis, as it constantly refers to his own personal troubles - the more he yells at his employer, who ultimately he does befriend, albeit cautiously, the more the very perceptive, though dying 72 year old man, reminds him of his own mess as a filanderer and failed husband. There's a rather unconvincing scene towards the end of the picture, when at some motel Stump is presented with Divorce papers and he begins to fire Cobb's gun in the direction of this guy who's been chasing him around the country for this purpose. The script is very strong throughout but here the scene ends on a depressing note. What was needed was for Cobb to simply convey through his eyes "Wanna throw any more "stones" at *me*, son?" Well, maybe that's a bit trite, but the scene closes as Lee says that he saw nothing - just a coupla bad boys.
Lolita Davidovitch has some good scenes, but her 1960 Vegas Cocktail Waitress has the look but not the "feel", meaning Shelton probably had to make her a milennium feminist to fit the quasi-political contemporary movie industry demands. Keeping the character more to the period would have worked.
Another concession to the male-female spirit of today, not 1960, is in a deleted scene: Stump watches, through his office window, and in the company of his Secretary, a shapely lady ascend a staircase. In the midst of his confusion and disorientation, he tells his exasperated co-worker to tell his wife, who has just called, well, tell her something. I wonder what the "real" Al Stump thought of that kind of stuff.
Tyrus Raymond Cobb surely fought death...and life. In his profession, he reached high, refusing to be taken lightly or be beaten. As his violent world finally came crashing in, and his health was in free-fall, he still refused to acknowledge his vulnerability, his mortality. Maybe that's the only real lesson to be learned by all of this: even a wicked man can sustain by calling up his reserve of strength and courage; maybe even artfulness.
Mr. Shelton delivers a very interesting narrative of the back story, though he sounds very subdued - perhaps the memory that the kind of numbers the Georgia Peach drew out to the old ball park did not exactly compare to this movie about his last days.
Rating: - Five-Star Level of Disgust
Yes, it is possible to feel utter disgust for the subject of a movie - even while acknowledging respect for the excellent performance by Tommy Lee Jones in transforming himself into Ty Cobb, a man who has nothing to redeem him but a talent for tossing and batting a ball. It is, after all, a game, folks.
The movie, in general, is well done. No technical complaints, no complaints on any performance by any actor, no complaints about how the life of this man Cobb was portrayed - may the truth be told. "Prince among men," says Cobb of himself. "A great who is misunderstood." Hardly. I have rarely seen a portrayal of a man with so little to redeem him. His only excuse, achingly lame, is that there was an ugly scene in his childhood, adulterous parents gone mad with rage. Okay. Anyone out there without a dysfunction in your childhood, raise your hand! Thought so. Albeit, Cobb's childhood contains some doozies, but as he himself admits: "I was a prick even before my father was murdered." He begs the nature versus nurture debate, but personally, I don't care. Anyone who so defies any accountability for himself throughout his 72 years, eschews all responsibility, gains no compassion from me. He beat his many wives, attempted rape, regularly frequented prostitutes, abused his children, was racist to the bone, purposefully aimed to injure other athletes on the field, exhibited only brutality and rudeness to others, and topped it all off with an incredible arrogance. At least justice reigns: Cobb has not a single friend in the world, knows only hatred, and must deal with his own demons to the very end.
And he is in the baseball Hall of Fame? Why? I struggle to respect the game if it honors such as Cobb, regardless of his stats.
Yes, that's right, that's five stars I gave this movie. Perhaps we at times need to be reminded of what and how not to be, where to draw the line, and perhaps a portrayal such as this might spur some on to think twice about who we honor in our baseball-adoring culture, and why.
Rating: - A Tour de Force
Make no mistake: this is Tommy Lee Jones' vehicle. Cobb was a larger than life icon both on and off the field, the first superstar in American sports, and Jones plays him larger than life.
This movie, based on Al Stump's second biography of Tiger great Tyrus Raymond Cobb, is the biography Stump didn't release after Cobb's death in 1961 - that was the cleaned up version, the version Cobb wanted published, that talked of the nuts and bolts of baseball: how to steal second base, how to hit to the opposite field - all the things Cobb felt the public wanted to read about from one of the game's "immortals."
It wasn't until the 1990s, shortly before Stump's own death, that his second biography of Cobb was released, the one that painted the darkest depths of Cobb's very complex character. He was a man driven by inner demons who, only in the end, revealed to Stump, the highest paid sports writer of that era, some of what haunted him. Stump spent several months with Cobb shortly before his death to write the story as Cobb wanted it written, but late at night he wrote the other version.
Cobb was a monster, but the viewer is unable to look away, which only serves to peel away another layer of this movie: our fascination with greatness, our inability to look away, to deny ugliness in an effort to glimpse or brush up against greatness. When Stump threatens to quit before the book is finished, the result of Cobb's constant abuse and manipulation, Cobb tells him: "You won't quit. You've never been this close to greatness."
Jones' performance in Cobb is nothing short of brilliant: some of his expressions reveal more about Cobb's character than many other, less accomplished actors, could reveal even with a page of dialogue. When Cobb pulls up in front of his daughter's home (he hasn't seen her in 15 years), she looks out the window, recognizes her father, and pulls down the shade and closes the curtains, and the viewer aches for the pain Jones reveals in his simple expression.
We see Cobb as the consummate showman: "Do you know what it's like to have 50,000 fans boo and throw things at you?" he asks Stump. "It's the greatest feeling in the world." We see him at his worst: at a Reno nightclub, where he walks onstage to a cheering crowd enamored with seeing a living legend of the game, only to, within minutes, clear the room with racist slurs. We see him beat his wife and pistol whip to death in an alley a man he would later claim tried to rob him (he was later acquitted, largely in part because of his celebrity status - shades of O.J. and Kolbe Bryant). We watch him jump into the stands to beat up a fan who had no hands.
And still we are unable to look away. What causes a man to act in such a way?
We get a glimpse of some of Cobb's goodness: he left the largest portion of his fortune - yes, he was immensely wealthy, not so much from his playing days but from his investments in General Motors (ground floor) and Coca Cola ("Invest in Coke, Stumpy, it's coming out in cans.") - to be used to build a children's hospital, and for years he supported Mickey Cochrane, one of the game's all-time greatest catchers, and many other destitute players - "You won't put that in the book," he tells Stump. "But why not?" Stump asks. "Because it would embarrass Mickey."
Yet the good cannot justify the many monstrous acts; but Jones' riveting performance brings to mind another well-known monster, this one fictional, and the viewer realizes that monsters are not so much born but created, as was the Frankenstein monster, who, like Cobb, only sought to be loved and accepted. Yes, Cobb's monstrous behavior was due in part to our acceptance of that behavior, our willingness to look the other way in the presence of greatness. A telling moment in Cobb has him confessing to Stump: "You're the best friend I have."
Only in the end do we get a glimpse of what fueled Cobb's demons, a glimpse into a childhood that left him marked for a lifetime, that both drove him to greatness on the ball field while at the same time prevented him from achieving intimacy with anyone - wife, lover, team mate: "But a man must defend his mother at all times, shouldn't he, Al?"
Cobb was a pathetic man, worse than a curmudgeon, unable to give up his past achievements on the field, a feared and hated competitor, unable, even in his 70s, to allow another man to best him, loathed even by his own children; yet thanks to Jones' portrayal, Stump's book and Ron Shelton's brilliant screenplay, we find that he is also pitiable.
Robert Wuhl is cast as Al Stump and his performance is good, while Lolita Davidovich is the Reno cigarette girl to whom the impotent Cobb, on medication for high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and half a dozen other ailments, gives $1,000 to tell everyone that she slept with "the great Ty Cobb." Roger Clemens, the real-life pitcher, makes a cameo appearance as an opposing pitcher in a flashback to a game played during Cobb's prime, and Ernie Harwell, Hall of Fame announcer for the Detroit Tigers, also makes a cameo appearance in a scene at a Hall of Fame banquet.
If you're looking for a baseball movie, a how to steal second base or hit to the opposite field movie, look elsewhere, but for the human drama of a real life monster and a glimpse into the dark side of the human psyche, both the monster's as well as our own, Cobb is highly recommended.
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