If you’re a baseball fan, you’re going to enjoy “Moneyball,” starring Brad Pitt. If you’re not a fan, you’re still going to like this movie that’s about baseball and much, much more. You see, it’s also about innovation and transforming a system. Pitt gives a strong, nuanced performance as the temperamental Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics; the supporting cast is strong, especially Jonah Hill; and the script is sharp and insightful. Pitt and Hill make for an endearingly odd couple – the 40-something baseball player turned manager and the portly 20-something nerd and their chemistry is surprisingly effective. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s turn as Art Howe, the gruff and insubordinate A’s manager, proves that he’s good at playing nasty. Director Bennett Miller, who directed Hoffman in Capote, has a deft hand with the sports material and Brad Pitt is outstanding under his guidance. The movie is about 15 minutes too long as it attempts to include a father-daughter subplot that doesn’t fully work, but the acerbic humor and memorable dialogue of the script, written by Steve Zaillan and Aaron Sorkin, more than makes up for this.
Because Oakland is a small-market team, Billy Beane (Pitt) doesn’t have the money to spend on players that teams like the Yankees or Red Sox do. In fact, richer teams eventually steal all of his good players. Then Beane meets Peter Brand (Hill), a young man with a Yale education working as a statistician in Cleveland. Brand has taken to heart the statistical calculations championed by Bill James, who wrote The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Beane brings Peter to Oakland to help him find some talent that he can afford. In the process, Beane throws out the way he had assembled teams in the past that were based on the assessments, hunches and prejudices of his veteran scouts. (One scout didn’t like the way a player’s girlfriend looked.) He also locks horns with team manager Art Howe (Hoffman), but Beane’s controversial methods result in a record-breaking 20-game winning streak. “Moneyball” takes a dry story about numbers and turns it into something enjoyable and illuminating. It’s one of the best movies of the year. 9/23/11
1 comment:
There is an old saying "the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting the same results". Billy knew that this statement was true and he knew that he had a tiny budget! What was he going to do? Find out why I love baseball and why I love this movie, see this film.
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