Cobb (1994)

Greatness and decency don't always go hand in hand, and sometimes the brightest stars cast the darkest shadows. Ron Shelton's "Cobb," which he wrote and directed, takes on Ty Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones), long regarded as one of the greatest players in baseball history and, by reputation, the meanest, dirtiest and most arrogant. The film focuses on Cobb in 1960 and 1961, when he's in his 70s, dying of cancer and working on his memoirs with sportswriter Al Stump (Robert Wuhl), his long-suffering collaborator. There's not a drop of sentimentality here. Cobb never softens, even as death closes in; he's a monster of mythic size, roaring, raging and breathing fire right to the end. Jones, in the spirit of the man he's playing, tears into the role with breathtaking ferocity, and together he and Shelton create a grimly funny portrait of the artist as a cantankerous old coot. Lolita Davidovich co-stars as a Reno cigarette girl who crosses Cobb's path.