Critic Reviews

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

  It's such a potent and courageous wreck of a movie that it's worth more than most 'successes.'

• Stephen Hunter, Baltimore Sun

  Stump is well-played by affable Robert Wuhl, who has the unenviable responsibility of representing the one sane man in Ty's crazy universe.

• David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor

  Cobb's accomplishments on the ball field would make for an absorbing documentary, but it's the passions and pitfalls of his private life that dominate Ron Shelton's melodramatic film.

• Thom Hutchinson, Radio Times

  Ron Shelton, whose Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump were jokey tales of disillusionment set in the sporting world, here redefines the life of an idol with a certain honest savagery.

• Scott Nash, Three Movie Buffs

  The movie never equals the performance, but still fascinating to watch.

• Kim Newman, Empire Magazine

  Massively underrated.

• , Film4

  Director Shelton is a master at locker room drama, and helped by a towering performance of snarling egomania and drug-fuelled bitterness from Jones, he tackles the dichotomies of [Cobb] with engaging enthusiasm.

• , TV Guide's Movie Guide

  Tommy Lee Jones is superb in the title role, but writer-director Ron Shelton unwisely chose to structure the film as a two-character piece, thus placing undue attention on the lackluster character of Cobb's biographer, Al Stump.

• Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

  Tommy Lee Jones gives an uncompromisingly volcanic performance as the psychotic bigot, one of baseball greatest players, known for his aggressive conduct, racism, and sexism.

• Chuck O'Leary, Fantastica Daily

  Completely enthralling from first frame to last, Cobb is a fascinating, uncompromising portrait of a rage-filled, contradictory man fighting his own private war with the world.

• Mike Barkacs, Bullz-Eye.com

  If you're looking for a sugary-sweet baseball hero story, this ain't it; but it is an entertaining story about a great ex-player who could make Albert Belle look like Mother Theresa.

Read all 16 critic reviews