Best movie of this year hands down!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Blistering performances.

A movie like this one just goes to show that if anyone involved in making this movie had bothered to do a shred of research into the life of Cobb, they would have quickly realized that Al Stump fabricated the vast majority of what has become the unfortunate long held beliefs about Cobb. It's too bad that no one looked any further than his book and just ran with it as Gospel. Al Stump has been largely discredited due to these fabrications, false statements, forgeries and sensationalizing events in Cobb's life to cast him in an unflattering light. This movie hones in on them and magnifies them. To start with the small stuff, Cobb was not, as commonly believed, a dirty player - and this is according to men he played against. He was tough, rough, and an agitator, but he never "sharpened his spikes" as legend (and the film) attest. Nor did he pistol-whip blacks for no reason. Nor was he a raging racist (he said that blacks should be allowed to play ball wholeheartedly). If you want to know the true Ty Cobb, the one that Al Stump threw into the dustbin in favor of his fabrication, read "A Terrible Beauty" by Charles Leerhsen. HE did some actual research. It's a shame that people as bright as Ron Shelton (director) and Ken Burns (Baseball mini-series) never took the time to investigate any of Stump's wild accusations.

The story of legendary baseballer Ty Cobb.A fascinating subject, poorly studied. The problem is lack of focus. Ty Cobb is at the same time portrayed as comical and massively bigoted, light and dark. You don't know whether to laugh with him or at him, or just be shocked. The plot itself is mostly just a cross-country caper, filled with mindless high jinks. In the end, you do get a good feel for Cobb's character and personal demons, but it takes so long to get to the point. A tighter, grittier script and direction were required.Tommy Lee Jones does what the director asked of him - played an alpha male whose antics were vastly over-the-top. Robert Wuhl is irritating as the sports writer / biographer.

Ty Cobb is in the top five of the greatest players in Baseball history. In fact, he was the first man elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but there has never been a film about his life. While Cobb was a great baseball player and one the toughest men to ever live, he was also an outspoken racist, who was quick to fight anyone, including his wife and kids. In 1960, a dying Cobb contacted sportswriter, Al Stump to ask him to tell his story. That is what I thought this critically acclaimed film would be, but it wasn't. While the title is Cobb, the film is really about Al Stump and what it was like to spend time with the great Ty Cobb, after he'd completely lost his faculties. While it wasn't the film I'd hoped it would be, Tommy Lee Jones gave the performance of a lifetime. What can you say about Jones that hasn't already been said? He is the best actor in Hollywood and can play absolutely anyone. Jones was very convincing, showing Cobb as a deeply troubled man who covered his shame with outrageous behavior. In recent years, since the passing of Al Stump, many people who knew Cobb have come out saying the book and film were overly exaggerated, but even so, the facts about Cobb are well documented. Cobb is not the film most people expected it to be and it ranks among the biggest flops in box office history. The story however is one you haven't heard before and is performed admirably by an all-star cast. This is not your typical baseball movie, but rather a moving look at a man who was destine to either be a legend or an inmate.

This is an awful film. Not because it portrays a man in a not so positive light, nor because it may or may not be true to life. Simply because the story is enormously uninteresting.Tommy Lee Jones gives the pest performance as he can under the circumstances. He fires guns, belts a lot of people and is antagonistic towards just about every character in this atrocity. Character, is the main word here. Not once did I believe that any of the people here were portrayed with a minimum of accuracy. Like the character, Cobb, himself points out: "What is the truth?" I think that there must have been a serious attempt at making a decent biopic but it was probably too boring. So the director thought of an angle. Let's make it as cartoonish as we can possibly get away with. To quote another line from the movie: "He knows greatness", said by the Al Stump character, commenting on why he doesn't get the hell out of writing the bio on Cobb. He will never know greatness from Cobb and neither will we.There is another scene towards the end where Cobb is dying and has discovered that Stump has betrayed him. What does he do? He gives Stump his blessing to write a tell-all bio on him. That is maybe the best scene in the film. He basically says: "Who cares?". Ironically, a lot of people does seem to care, for about a minute, until they find some other gossip that's juicier. The only people who will truly care are the box office profiteers and by the looks of it, they were truly hurt because it was one of the more notorious failures of movies starring Tommy Lee Jones.