66
Metascore
26 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversShelton'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.
- 88Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelMost 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 (Bull Durham) knows that the close study of a single day can decode a human life.
- 80EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanThe film never sentimentalises the old swine as it explores the nature of his genius. Terrific ballplayer, miserable human being. Unworthy subject, great movie.
- 80Time Out LondonTime Out LondonShelton'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. Jones gives a grandstand performance - this is his Patton, or even perhaps his Macbeth - as the pistol-packin', pill-poppin' Cobb, a monster who daren't look himself in the face, and refuses to apologise.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliShelton took a chance with this film. Given a less talented performer, Cobb could have been an awkward, over-the-top melodrama. As it is, however, the movie works much as Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle does -- as an unobstructed view of human degradation and the damage it wreaks.
- 60The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinAs a film maker who has his own love-hate romance with the sports world, Mr. Shelton is naturally drawn to his writer's uneasy relationship to Cobb. And at its best, this film explores the edgy compromises that link these two, while at worst it dramatizes the relationship broadly and histrionically.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertTy Cobb was by many accounts a mean-tempered, vicious, drunken, wife- beating, racist SOB who was impossible to spend any length of time with, and the movie Cobb faithfully represents those qualities, especially the last one.
- 50TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineTommy 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.
- 50San Francisco ChroniclePeter StackSan Francisco ChroniclePeter StackGiven its mad-dog subject, Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones as the raspy, snarling and seemingly demented Ty Cobb -- one of baseball's greatest players -- should have been a home run of a bitter, heartrending drama. Instead, this histrionic portrait of the most celebrated cur in sports history comes across like a fly ball that thuds on the ground.
- 40Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranWithout anyone to care about, Cobb's script problems become increasingly intractable. Confronted by Cobb's volcanic personality, the film is completely nonplussed, unable to decide if it should be amused, piteous, reluctantly admiring or just plain disgusted.