Though the movie is somewhat modestly produced, it does a good job at showing Rose behind the scenes. But Dowd's investigation shows otherwise. MLB's highest officials confront Rose about the allegations, which he strongly denies. Janszen is arrested for dealing steroids and tells the media of Rose's gambling on his team's games. Janszen gets progressively more uncomfortable with his unsafe position but the police get to him before the mafia does. This results in the mafia threatening Rose's friend Paul Janszen (Dash Mihok), who places Rose's bets for him. He piles up big losses in his bets, many of which are illegal, and sometimes doesn't pay quickly enough to satisfy those to whom he owes money. In one scene, the scoreboard at the Reds' then home, Riverfront Stadium, is broken and Rose is clearly uncomfortable with not being able to see the scores of the other games on which he has money at stake. He routinely bets $10,000 per MLB game, including those involving the Reds, who he always bets to win. But the dark side of Rose's gambling is shown early and often. In one of the early scenes, he is simultaneously watching three games, all of which he has presumably bet on, and cheers wildly, as if his team is playing in the games. In the movie, Rose (played by Tom Sizemore) is shown as gambling with the relentless competitive fire that made him a fan favorite on the field. The movie is based on John Dowd's investigation, which led to Rose's banishment. Instead, "Hustle" concentrates largely on Rose's gambling, which he has long taken to an obsessive level and says is his only hobby. Unlike most sports biography movies, this one has little on the field action and assumes that the viewer is already familiar with Rose's career accomplishments. He managed the Reds, the team for which he played most of his career, during that entire period. "Hustle" takes place from October, 1986 - the month that Rose's playing career ended - until August 24, 1989, the day of his banishment. Though not a masterpiece, it's a solid presentation of the downfall of Rose, who set dozens of Major League Baseball records but was banned for life from MLB for betting on his hometown Cincinnati Reds while he was managing that team. But "Hustle" shows that ESPN is already making good progress in movie making. Although I generally enjoy that station, I was colossally disappointed in the only movie of theirs I'd previously seen, their debut, 2002's "A Season on the Brink." That movie is a painfully shallow and amateur adaptation of John Feinstein's outstanding chronicle of Indiana University's 1985-86 men's basketball team. But I became skeptical when learning that it was made by ESPN. Because I'm a sports fanatic and few athletes are better suited for a biography movie than Pete Rose, I was initially excited about seeing this movie.
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