The Natural (1984) Barry Levinson @ Naro Expanded Cinema
Details
RUNTIME: 144 minutes
RATING: PG
SYNOPSIS (from the Naro; buy tickets here): On the way to a tryout with the Chicago Cubs, young baseball phenom Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is shot by the unstable Harriet Bird (Barbara Hershey). After 16 years, Hobbs returns to pro baseball as a rookie for the last-place New York Knights. Despite early arguments with his manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), Hobbs becomes one of the best players in the league, and the Knights start winning. But this upsets the Judge (Robert Prosky), their owner, who wants Hobbs to lose games, not win. (1984, PG, 2h 25m)
BLURBS:
"Being a baseball fan involves repeatedly experiencing exquisite pain and exquisite joy. Well, there's a lot of both in The Natural." - Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
"The Natural is an impeccably made, but quite strange, fable about success and failure in America." - Variety
"The message is: Baseball is purely and simply a matter of divine intervention. At about the 130-minute mark, I got the idea that God's only begotten son was playing right field for the New York team." - Roger Ebert