The Natural

The film version of The Natural pulls off the neat trick of conveying the spirit of the Bernard Malamud novel upon which it is based, even while changing both the outcome and the meaning of Malamud's closing chapters. In his first film appearance in four years, Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a farm ...more

Based on Bernard Malamud's book, Barry Levinson's baseball epic is a carefully-wound extrapolation of the original. The all-American Robert Redford's Biblical qualities made him the perfect fit for wunderkind player Roy Hobbs. The plot takes shape slowly, drawn out in painstaking detail to make the payoff all the more memorable. As the three women Roy encounters, Barbara Hershey, Kim Basinger and Glenn Close all turn in solid performances as Roy's three fates. This is an outstanding sports film ...more