Cynical Cinema

Hustle is a 2004 movie from ESPN and Alliance Films, all about the troubled life of Pete Rose. It comes out on DVD today, July 22nd, and it begins after his retirement as a baseball player, in 1987 when he was the manager of the Cincinnatti Reds. I assume we all know the Pete Rose story, but here it is in a nutshell anyway: Rose is still the all-time hits leader in baseball history, a man who knew nothing but baseball. In 1988 he was banned for life from baseball by commissioner Bart Giamatti for gambling. As the manager of the Reds, he was betting on baseball, (including some bets on his own team). Tom Sizemore plays Rose, and one can only imagine he brings many of his personal demons to the role. And I found his performance alternately brilliant and irritating. At times, he really seems to embody Rose as he was at his most charming and reckless (he really does look like him), and at other times, I couldn’t shake the image of John Turturro. Somehow, he really reminded me of John Turturro. But that’s likely my own problem. The movie opens with Springsteen singing Glory Days, which is a promising beginning.

Hustle is directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the man behind such classics as The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. Bogdanovich shows a sure hand here, but he isn’t given much to work with. I have always felt that the way Rose played the game was an incredibly important part of his story. That on the field, he had no off switch, and that made him an all-time great. But off the field, that lack of an off switch made him something of a menace, to himself and others. The moment when, in the 1970 all-star game, he ran over Ray Fosse, a catcher for the Cleveland Indians, separating his shoulder. Fosse was never really the same after that.

And at the time, this moment became famous in baseball. Look how much Pete Rose wants to win! Even in a meaningless All-Star game he’s willing to get dirty! Well…OK. But suppose, for a moment, that Scott Stevens had laid out say, Ron Francis at centre ice during an NHL All-Star contest, ruining his career. Would anyone celebrate this? Or would they call him a maniac? No one throws at batters in an All-Star game. No one slides hard into second or runs over a catcher. It’s a meaningless exhibition. This was perhaps more an indication of a sociopathic personality than it was an example of hard-nosed baseball.

And the Fosse incident is dealt with in Hustle, early on in a throw-away moment. “Oh, isn’t that Ray Fosse? He was never the same, eh?” And that’s it. So although the details of the Pete Rose baseball playing career are glossed over, his gambling habits are put under a microscope. The whole movie deals with just two years - from 1987 when Rose met Paul Janszen, the man who would become his assistant and later bring him down. And really, Paul is the star of the movie, as he goes from wide-eyed hero-worshipper to a disillusioned, badly used former friend of Rose who turns him in partly because he has no choice, and partly because he has been victimized by the man.

And that’s fine, Paul is played quite well by Dash Mihok, but this really is a movie about Pete Rose, right? Well, why not spend the time learning about Rose and how he got to be the way he is, instead of focusing on the other guy? Why not start during his playing career, at least a bit? Rose comes off at first as a guy who just wants everyone to like him, but slowly it becomes clear that he is just using these people who consider him their friend. And that’s all we really learn about him throughout the whole film. Which makes the whole picture feel very long.

The baseball scenes are few and far between, and really don’t look realistic at all. The supporting cast is decent, but Melissa DiMarco as Rose’s wife Carol doesn’t really seem to know how she feels about her husband at all. Sarain Boylan, as Paul’s wife, is pretty easily placated. And the people playing Marge Schott and Bart Giamatti and Fay Vincent all look quite a lot like the people they are playing, but that is where this story really is. In the back rooms of baseball. And these characters are terribly underused. This movie is really not good enough for the story it tells.

But wait! There is a reason to pick up this DVD! It is the special features. Bart Giamatti’s press conference in 1988, where he banned Pete Rose from baseball for life, has an eerie ring in the context of baseball today. His line “the integrity of the game of baseball must be defended by a process which, itself, lives up to the same standards of integrity” (I paraphrase because I can’t remember it word-for-word) is really striking when looked at through the lens of the steroid scandal. The interviews with Rose are incredible to watch as well - the Primetime interview where he finally admits to betting on baseball in 2004. A Sportscentury interview with John Dowd. There is even an interview with Paul Janszen on ESPN. But what’s saddest about these special features is that they give more of a window into Pete Rose than does the movie. The movie is a miss, but the special features are magnificent.