Cobb 1994

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: Of all the good and great movies that have slipped through the cracks in recent years, none has been treated as appallingly as Cobb. Read more

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: Most biopics mistakenly try to take us from cradle to grave and end up skimming the surface. The wisdom of Cobb is that writer-director Ron Shelton knows that the close study of a single day can decode a human life. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: [Jones] lets it all loose here. It's the performance of a lifetime: full of menace and venom, eloquence and fire, rot and pathos, crackling rawness and realism. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The result, whether Cobb is wailing about greatness or ruminating about the dark circumstances around his father's death, is a performance too operatic and out of control. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: Ty Cobb is such a towering figure in this motion picture that it's easy to overlook Al Stump -- and Robert Wuhl's feisty, witty performance in the thankless role. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Unfortunately, the movie just makes Stump look like a self-important jerk, possibly a bigger jerk than Cobb, and Wuhl's affable, weightless performance doesn't help. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: Even allowing for the intentional excesses of such an episode, delicacy is a casualty here. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: It's such a potent and courageous wreck of a movie that it's worth more than most 'successes.' Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Cobb turns into a noisy, cantankerous buddy picture. Read more

Michael Sragow, New Yorker: Cobb cuts right through the winner-take-all ethos of American athletics. It's a raw, inspired, audaciously funny, and unexpectedly moving collaboration between the writer-director Ron Shelton and Tommy Lee Jones. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Jones' on-target portrayal of the dying athlete is mesmerizing. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It's the kind of film where you admire the craftsmanship and artistry while questioning the wisdom of the project itself. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Shelton's strong, stinging film -- one of the year's best -- wants to get at something ingrained in the American character: the irrational desire to make saints of sports heroes. Read more

Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle: This histrionic portrait of the most celebrated cur in sports history comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: This is a messy movie, sometimes repetitive, sometimes too compressed and allusive. But that's like saying Ty Cobb was not a very good sport -- irrelevant in comparison to the horrific fascination of his story. Read more

Time Out: Shelton's film is about the nature of truth and popular myth, about the single-minded pursuit of glory, and the horrors within. It's also very funny. Read more

Leonard Klady, Variety: It's unclear just how much sympathy we are to extend the unrepentant and bullying title character. Read more