Movies Reviews

Moneyball – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Sep 24, 2011, 23:57 GMT

“Moneyball” is based on the bestselling Michael Lewis book about Billy Beane, the former baseball player who resurfaced as the Oakland A’s general manager and found success fielding competitive teams for low cost. ...more

Brad Pitt’s thoughtful portrayal of the Oakland A’s Billy Beane is certain to get him a top spot on the Oscar race charts.  It’s not a showy performance but it is full formed and defined, with a certain economy that very experienced actors have. 

It’s expressed with delicacy, through body language and delivery that is true to his creation, not to the great god Pitt.  And he fronts an interesting real life story.

Billy Beane was the General Manager of the Oakland A’s, a losing team that he and a baseball geek turned around with a computerized system that rated players on specific things like “getting to first”.

Their revolutionary thinking flew in the face of 150 years of baseball philosophy which in 2001 touted the better looking, conventional and well-behaved players over the distinctive, raucous, shy and underappreciated players, the cast-offs.  He recognized that getting a good player was paramount, not good copy.

This baseball movie doesn’t have a lot of baseball.  The action is in the shaping of the game, in the minds of the behind-the scenes executives who changed it.  There is a mathematics angle as new players have to fit into a painfully low budget.  It’s actually a bit of a puzzle they’re putting together and it’s a fascinating journey. 

Nearly all of Beane’s choices for his new team were met with howls of derision, but he was confident, maybe beyond reason, that the system devised by his assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) held water.  Beane was brave, never afraid of change.  And change was clearly needed.  

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the gruff team manager who blocks Beane at every turn.  Barely physically recognizable, his character is quiet and angry, seething because he’s humiliated by his single year contract and Beane won’t give an inch.   He doesn’t say much but what he says is to the point.  It’s an unusual role for Hoffman who is generally much broader and dominant.  Capote previously starred in Capote for Miller.

Miller’s Moneyball is masterful, subtle and beautifully rhythmic.  He doesn’t exploit Pitt or Hill (now in a bit of a star phase) but rather allows them to be fairly restrained.  This is a big story and baseball is a big game but this is as intimate a film on sport as I’ve seen. 

It’s dispenses with the obvious sports film maneuvers in favors of an intellectual approach – there are still the big fan moments but they are sometimes heard from the locker room, or seen on a screen instead of showing a crowd doing a boisterous wave or the players jumping all over each other. 

We hardly get to know the players because as far as this story is concerned, it’s not really necessary.   The real action goes on in the analysis, negotiations, strategizing, salesmanship and results.

We all know what happened for the Oakland A’s.  And know we know how it happened.

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35mm drama
Written by Steve Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin based on Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball”
Directed by Bennett Miller
Opens: Sept. 23
Runtime: 133 minutes
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some strong language
Country: USA
Language: English