MONEYBALL (2011)
Directed by Bennett Miller
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Kerris Dorsey, Chris Pratt, Stephen Bishop, Brent Jennings, Nick Porrazzo
I'll be honest, folks. I was going to start this review with a lengthy and detailed history of the Oakland Athletics, complete with footnotes, annotations and a video clip or two. Problem is, I'm not much of a baseball historian (not for the A's, anyway). Besides, this isn't a baseball blog. If it were, it would be full of lamentations and very harsh language, as I am a Cubs fan.
But on to the movie...
Moneyball differs from most baseball movies in that it doesn't necessarily focus on the players. Instead, our main man is Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane (Pitt), a former hot-prospect-turned-Major-League-bust-turned-scout-turned-executive. He's coming off an impressive year that ended when the A's dropped American League Divisional Series to the Yankees, three games to two. On top of that, he's losing Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi and Jason Isringhausen. He and the brass try to figure out a way to rebuild and move on, but Billy insists they can't build a winning team on Oakland's meager budget. While on a trip to Cleveland to try to strike a deal for some unwanted players and extra cash, he meets a young man named Peter Brand (Hill), who the Indians brass always consult before saying yes or no to a trade. None of Beane's deals go through, so he approaches Brand and asks what he know that nobody else seems to know. Bean's philosophy is not one of on-field fundamentals, but of numbers. He places a high stake on a player's On-Base Percentage, saying that that the players who get on base the most (by hit, walk, or even hit by pitch - doesn't matter) are the key to winning games. Billy sees this as an opportunity to get some players on the cheap while bucking the system that baseball is built on. Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with his scouts or the team's manager, Art Howe (Hoffman). According to them, baseball is all about the fundamentals and intangibles. Billy insists it's all a numbers game. The two sides butt heads, and the A's fall to a losing record. But things start to turn around once the the two warring factions realize that both aspects of the game can be melded together.
It's risky to take something as beloved the Baseball Movie, and turn the attention from the players to the management. In other films, they're portrayed as uncaring monsters at worst and exposition-spouting caricatures at best. Here, we get a more realistic look inside the offices of Major League Baseball, and at a time when we see the game changing. It would be easy for the film to get bogged down in the "sabermetrics" (the statistical analysis of baseball that was pioneered with this team), but instead, we are shown what really goes into making a winning team. It's not all numbers, but then again, it's not all about the gameplay. Baseball is a game where even the best team can hit a slump and go from the top to the bottom of the standings in a month. But even the most unlikely team can build a streak that propels them to the top, as the Athletics did in 2002. This film shows us that the game is best played when these two schools of thought meet in the middle, one adjusting for the other as the situation warrants.
But again, this isn't a baseball blog, it's a movie blog. And this is one very well put-together movie. Director Bennett Miller mixes a cinema verite style with actual game footage for a very authentic feel, but he also moves more into the cinematic realm with several stylized slow-motion sequences during a key game against the Kansas City Royals. In one film, Miller shows us that he's capable of varying styles - a smart move when it's only your third feature.
Brad Pitt is pretty engrossing as Billy Beane. Earlier in the film, he reminded me very much of Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The major difference between the two is that Beane ends up being a rather likable character, with a charming daughter (Dorsey) who he tries to see as often as he can. While these scenes aren't entirely necessary, they do give Billy a bit more of an emotional depth I suspect he wouldn't have had without them. Jonah Hill, usually content to play for laughs in gross-out comedies like Superbad, plays Brand as a low-key number cruncher with a passionate love for baseball. Philip Seymour Hoffman is equally good as A's manager Art Howe, who just wants to manage the team he's given without asking too many questions. Many of the film's scenes were shot in a very Robert Altman-esque style, with theatrical staging and overlapping dialogue, and it is an environment where an actor can get lost in a character. And in this case, I'm glad that happened. I'm glad that I saw Billy Beane and not Brad Pitt.
As I read back over this before hitting the "Publish" button, I realize that I, too, kind of dote about our National Pastime. It's good to know that in this age of statistical number crunching and figuring out a player's worth based on Slugging Percentage, WHIPs, ERAs and other various acronyms, we can still get excited about simply going to the ballpark to watch a game.
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