Movie Review - Moneyball

Moneyball (2011)

Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Directed by Bennett Miller

Moneyball is a non-sports sports movie.  While we get glimpses of some moments on the baseball field during the Oakland A's 2002 season, the real crux of the movie happens behind the scenes in the clubhouse as general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt in a role he completely embodies) utilizes a decades-old statistical method of choosing players based on their on-base percentage rather than anything else and ends up crafting a baseball team that finds themselves in the running to win the World Series.

After an unsuccessful playoff run in 2001, Beane's squad is hit with the loss of three key players to three teams willing to pay the athletes boatloads of money, and the A's owner refuses to pony up any more money for Beane to entice the so-called 'top tier' players to Oakland -- as Billy says, "there are the rich teams, then there are the poor teams, then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us."  Desperate, Billy meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale economics graduate who helps Beane use statistics in an attempt to build a cost-effective and, above all else, successful baseball team.

The whole flick was certainly intriguing and even though I follow the Phillies (a team which I'd rather not talk about in these weeks following their disappointing 2011 playoff run), I wasn't the least bit knowledgeable about this Oakland A's team.  Because of that, there was a bit of genuine suspense that built as the movie progressed and, thanks to a wonderful performance from Brad Pitt, viewers find themselves completely invested in the real-life "character" of Billy Beane.

Pitt plays Beane as a determined man -- he wants nothing more than for his baseball team to be as successful as possible.  But he's also an incredibly doubtful and nervous man, anxious to see if his new approach to the game will be successful, knowing full well that if he fails, he's out of a job.  Having bailed on a full scholarship to college in order to play for the Mets as a young man (which proved to be a quick and unsuccessful venture), he has nothing else to fall back on and Pitt is incredibly adept at relaying that sense of uncertainty and unease.

Jonah Hill as the numbers cruncher Brand and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the A's reluctant and dismissive coach Art Howe both find themselves more than holding their own with Pitt.  This is certainly Hill's best role yet (although that's a bit of faint praise for the heretofore comic actor), although I will say I'm not quite sure where the Oscar buzz for him comes in (although it could very well be that the Supporting Actor category appears incredibly weak at this stage in the game).  Also, nice work from Parks and Recreations' Chris Pratt as a player given a second lease on the game by Beane and the young Kerris Dorsey as Beane's daughter who helps us see the more "human" side of the GM.

While Moneyball is absolutely a good film, there's a lack of passion that is necessary to make a "great" one.  Still, kudos to director Bennett Miller and writers Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin for somehow crafting an interesting flick that's based around baseball statistics.  The fact that they managed to create high levels of tension considering the subject matter is a credit to their talent.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+