‘Moneyball’ Review: Brad Pitt Hits A Triple Off The Wall
Moneyballis a baseball movie, an underdog tale, a true story and aBrad Pittvehicle. But more than any of those things,Moneyballis a character study about what it’s like to stand up against everyone and everything because you have faith in an idea.
In 2001, the Oakland Athletics, with a payroll of about $40 million – almost a third of the ultra-rich New York Yankees – made the playoffs. The next year, three of their marquee players were poached by other teams for bigger contracts and, with little money and few resources, general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) was forced to embrace a whole new way of looking at baseball to stay competitive.
Directed byBennett Miller, who directedPhilip Seymour Hoffman(also in this movie) to an Oscar inCapote,Moneyballplays like an exciting fantasy baseball draft if everyone was in on the intricacies but, at its heart, it’s really about the struggle of being different. And that’s something we can all relate to.
Based on theMichael Lewisbook of the same name (he also wroteThe Blind Side, which, like his bookMoneyball, also differs greatly from its film adaptation),Moneyballis the story of how the 2002 Oakland Athletics decided to go against hundreds of years of baseball tradition by embracing, on a professional level, sabermetrics. This is the belief that the only thing that matters in baseball are base runners. A walk is as good as a hit, giving up an out for a base runner is pointless and a long, long list of other things.
To describe this, the screenplay – co-written by Oscar-winnersAaron SorkinandSteven Zaillian– is very talky. There’s also not as much baseball as one would expect, opting instead for boardroom meetings about statistics and sit downs in living rooms. This is juxtaposed with Beane’s backstory story, both as a young aspiring baseball player and as a divorced father of one.
However, while this is a true story about sports, it doesn’t harp on the stats or traditional sports movie moments. Instead Beane’s reaction to these things and how it affects his life is paramount and Pitt conveys this by delivering performance that’s both confident and heartfelt. His partner-in-crime, Peter Brand, played byJonah Hill,is similarly impressive – stoic, but funny in his innocence and passion. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as manager Art Howe, also does a solid job but he – much like Hill’s character – gets short changed. Make no mistake about it, this is the Brad Pitt show.
From a purely baseball perspective,Moneyballdoes some interesting things too, specifically using a lot of actual footage of the games instead of recreations. However, while Miller’s film makes it seems like the A’s were hopeless when they lost their 2001 superstars, it fails to mention several other mega superstars that were still on the team as well as the new players the film focuses on. That slight ignorance of the truth works because this is a movie but, much in the way Sorkin’s Oscar-winning filmThe Social Networkwas probably half right, its not-so-obvious manipulation is a little tough to swallow if you know the facts.
In the end, though,Moneyballis about more than the players, the stats or the game itself. It’s about the strength it takes to stand up and do something you believe in when everyone says you can’t. And Brad Pitt and Bennett Miller show you that again and again.Moneyballisn’t quite a home run, but it’s an awesome triple off the wall.
/Film Rating– 8 out of 10
