Eight Men Out

Eight Men Out (1988) is a historical drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by John Sayles. It reconstructs the 1919 Black Sox scandal — the moment eight Chicago White Sox players agreed to lose the World Series on purpose, paid off by gamblers while owner Charles Comiskey kept their wages at poverty levels.

John Cusack plays Buck Weaver, a third baseman who knew about the fix but never took money and never threw a play. David Strathairn is pitcher Claude Williams, methodically losing in ways just obvious enough for two sportswriters to notice. Charlie Sheen, Michael Rooker and Christopher Lloyd fill out the ensemble of men who for very different reasons — greed, desperation, peer pressure, or sheer confusion about what they'd signed up for — ended up on the wrong side of a grand jury. Two years after the Series, the story broke wide open.

Sayles refuses to flatten anyone into a villain. The film is about what happens when the institution that exploits you also controls the rules — and what it costs when you play along. Stream Eight Men Out (1988) online on iFILM.