Cobb

Running time: N/A

Everyone hated this baseball legend. And he loved it'' the tag line for Cobb's release and most appropriate. Ty Cobb was certainly not a favorite and was, by many accounts, a mean-tempered, vicious, drunken, wife-beating, racist SOB who was impossible to spend any length of time with, and the movie Cobb faithfully represents those qualities, especially the last one. But don't let that scare you away. Ron Shelton's Cobb is one of the most original sports biopics. Why? Because it tells the truth, and you most likely will have trouble finding a better performance by Tommy Lee Jones. Ty Cobb was "the greatest baseball player of all time" as you'll see from the film. First in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he held the lifetime batting average of .367 and was known as the inventor of the modern game of baseball. A former baseball player himself, Shelton's Cobb approaches the story from an oblique angle, through the eyes of a sports writer hired by Cobb to ghost-write his autobiography. Now, two books exist, the original written in honor of a hero, the second to tell the "real story." This movie has a combination of both, as it reveals a human who happens to be a legend. --Mike Rabehl