Field of Dreams ***** (1989, Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, Burt Lancaster, Amy Madigan) Classic Movie Review 2633

Ray Liotta plays the ghost of baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in the classic 1989 fantasy drama film Field of Dreams.

Writer-director Phil Alden Robinson’s classic 1989 fantasy drama film Field of Dreams was a huge success for Kevin Costner, who plays a struggling Iowa corn farmer, Ray Kinsella.

He hears voices that tell him ‘If you build it, he will come’ and interprets this as an instruction to build a baseball field on his farm. Miraculously, in dreams, the ghosts of deceased Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and the other seven Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series appear to play on it.

Voices continue to haunt him and he seeks to understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose for his field. So he sets off to meet a reclusive 1960s Pulitzer prize-winner, Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), and an old-time player now doctor, Dr Archibald ‘Moonlight’ Graham (Burt Lancaster in his last feature film).

Field of Dreams is a wonderful movie, not really about baseball at all, but about having your dreams and summoning up the courage to pursue them. Costner, for the first time in his career, is superb. And all the support performances, starry or otherwise, are excellent: Amy Madigan (as Annie Kinsella), Timothy Busfield, Gaby Hoffmann, Frank Whaley and Dwier Brown among them.

It is a huge credit to the talented writer-director Robinson, who has dreamt up one of Hollywood’s finest fantasies, based on W P Kinsella’s book Shoeless Joe.

The score is by James Horner, who went on to win two Oscars for Titanic’s original score and song, and died tragically in a plane crash on 22 June 2015, aged 61.

Then unknown Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are among the thousands of uncredited extras in the Fenway Park scene.

Ray Liotta died in his sleep on 26 May 2022, aged 67, during the filming of Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic. He made his film debut in 1983’s The Lonely Lady but his first major acting role was in Something Wild (1986), followed by Dominick and Eugene (1988). He portrayed real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, and starred in Unlawful Entry, No Escape (1994), Unforgettable, Cop Land and Hannibal (2001).

Kevin Costner wrote: ‘Devastated to hear the news of Ray Liotta’s passing. While he leaves an incredible legacy, he’ll always be “Shoeless Joe Jackson” in my heart.’

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2633

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