Moneyball - movie review

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Totally agree with giving this five enthusiastic stars it was excellent. Nice review Clem!

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While I was travelling in America back in 2009 I caught a fever. The Yankees were due to play the Phillies and the New York Post ran a double page spread amounting more or less to comprehensive slander ("Their fans are second-rate & so is their city"). Despite this exercise in tabloid mud-slinging the deranged dedication to fandom was invigorating and after years of bewilderment at that country's national game I had become a baseball fan.

What did I know about the game itself? Absolutely nothing: it was the magic and mystery of the game that bewitched me. This film - and the theory behind it - exists solely to dismantle and demystify stripping the game of its mythologies to rely instead on hard evidence and statistics.

And yet Bennett Miller's wonderful Moneyball not only reminded me of that inexplicable undeniable love of the game it reminded me why we go to the cinema: to be moved exhilarated enlightened and entertained.

It's 2001 and The Oakland Athletics suck. Beaten by the Yankees in the postseason and with the three best players heading into free agency General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) finds himself struggling to put together a decent team for 2002 for one good reason: the A's are dirt poor.

As a title card tells us it was the Yankees' $114 457 768 versus the A's $39 722 689. Or as Beane puts it "There are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us."

Frustrated by his club's inaction - in one cracking scene imitation vacheron constantin watches Beane watches in horror as the A's council of elders put forward their choices for players based on such variables as good looks and er not much else - he visits Cleveland Indians HQ to attempt to finagle a trade. Just one star player could make the difference.

His hopes are dashed though he is intrigued by the presence of a young man (Jonah Hill) in the boardroom who though near-silent nevertheless appears to play a major role in the decision not to trade with Oakland.

Confronting the mysterious suit at his desk Beane discovers him to be Peter Brand a Yale economics graduate who has some pretty far out ideas about how to put together a baseball team. While the old timers - and the A's manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) - follow the same sorts of superstitions and hunches that saw Beane himself end up a disappointment Brand subscribes to sabermetrics the statistical analysis of baseball pioneered by Bill James. He encourages Beane to select players this way based solely - and objectively - on their on-base percentage.

Thus a pitcher dismissed as having a "funny" throwing style by the rest of the league is suddenly an attractive option. Players with dicky knees and elbows and pushing 40 suddenly get in the mix purely because they can get on base. The old timers at the team are horrified.

Beane gets his way making Brand his assistant GM and the A's enter the season with a motley team rounded out by the aging arrogant David Justice (Stephen Bishop) as outfielder and the unassuming Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) who memorably tells Justice that his biggest fear is "a baseball being hit in my general direction" as first baseman.

It doesn't go so well. Beane's daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey) asks him "Do you think you'll lose your job?" If he does he's aware he'll no longer be able to support her who he shares custody of with his ex-wife (Robin Wright) and her new/new age partner (a hysterical uncredited Spike Jonze). But soon replica glashutte panoretrograph watch after that rocky beginning to the season things start falling into place.

What happened next is baseball legend so the outcome of Moneyball is no surprise.

It doesn't matter: Miller has crafted an exquisite work that transcends the constraints of the "sports movie" genre while still injecting it with a vitality it hasn't seen since the glory days of (baseball) films like Bull Durham and The Natural.

As the edgy eccentric Beane Pitt eats his way through the film: popcorn chewing tobacco nuts. He inhales a Twinkie in one bite squeezing the little yellow cake from its wrapper into his mouth like toothpaste from the tube. It's a lovely counterpoint with Hill's reserved Brand who you might expect to be the one shadowed by a Big Mac meal. The two men's interaction is a sort of courtship; as they dance around each other Brand's trust of stats gives way to his admiration for the complicated Beane who hides in the gym during games so as not to jinx the outcome. Both are excellent as is the rest of the cast (which includes a handful of non-actors and actual baseball players).

Wally Pfister's cool blancpain villeret replica watches clean cinematography is invigorating in its simplicity as is Mychael Danna's score while overlays of stats and infographics are compelling in spite of the fact they might as well be hieroglyphics to us as well as to baseball's old guard.

Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin's script is a masterclass in efficiency and wit yet Moneyball is not a particularly talky picture: its strongest moments come cloaked in silence its most powerful storytelling is visual.

Through its eloquent exploration of the business of the great game - and the games that are played as we go about that business - Moneyball soars.

- Five stars


Moneyball opens in cinemas on Thursday November 10.