Moneyball (Columbia/Tristar)
Rated PG-13 for some strong language.
Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt, Kathryn Morris, Tammy Blanchard, Sergio Garcia, Stephen Bishop, Glenn Morshower.
Written by Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin, based on the book by Michael Lewis.
Directed by Bennett Miller.
GRADE: A
REVIEW:
I love baseball, and I usually love a good baseball movie. The great American Pastime has been the back drop for a lot of good movies, from The Pride of the Yankees to The Bad News Bears to The Natural to Field of Dreams, baseball provides the perfect backdrop for tales of drama, humor, hope, glory and heroism. Moneyball is the latest movie centered on the sport, but be not deceived; It's not a movie about baseball.
Brad Pitt stars as the real-life Billy Beane, a failed Major League player from the 1980s who ascended to the role of general manager of the Oakland A's in the late 1990s. In 2001, the A's reached the American Divisional Series, which they lost after winning the first 2 games. The series was most memorable for a defensive play at home plate in which Derek Jeter prevented the A's from scoring what could have been a game-tying run. The Yankees won that game 1-0, and went on to win the series 3 games to 2. The movie picks up the events that followed the disappointing end to an otherwise good season. With success comes opposition, and anyone who follows Major League Baseball knows that one of the biggest obstacles to having a talented team is keeping those great players on your roster. Beane's problems included the replacement of three all-stars, including Jason Giambi (signed by the Yankees), Johnny Damon (signed by the Red Sox) and Jason Isringhausen (signed by the St. Louis Cardinals). Beane soon discovers that unless his owner is willing to fork over a lot more money to sign quality replacements, the A's will be headed for the cellar of the American League West division.
Beane's problems are accentuated by the difficulty of trying to thrive within an old-school baseball philosophy that measures talent based on the subjective ideas of scouts who evaluate players on basic statistics like batting average and home runs, along with a player's looks, muscular build, and even the attractiveness of a player's wife or girlfriend.
Beane meets an Ivy League-educated nerd named Peter Brand (a fictional character based on the real-life Paul DePodesta) who shares a new philosophy of giving value to baseball players based on a system of sabermetrics. The basic principle of sabermetrics is the idea that a player's value has more to do with his ability to get on base and score, rather than fill up a SportsCenter highlight reel or hit home runs. Sabermetrics relies on empirical data, rather than subjective evaluation to determine player value. The most appealing principle of sabermetrics to Beane is the part that allows the A's to draft and build a successful team on a budget 1/4 the size of a behemoth like the New York Yankees.
Beane decides to adopt Brand's devotion the sabermetrics, but is met with huge opposition within the A's organization, especially those old-school scouts who don't like being overruled by Ivy Leaguer nerds with calculators. Beane sticks to his guns and with Brand's help, he puts together a 2002 team most experts would have considered an assemblage of misfits.
At first, the team struggles and begins the first few months in the AL West cellar, 10 games behind 1st place. Some of the players (including Scott Hatteberg, David Justice, and Jeremy Giambi) have a tough time succeeding in the new system, but manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) seems to have the worst time of it, feeling burdened with a bunch of players who don't mesh very well.
You can Google the 2002 Oakland A's to figure out the team's result, but suffice to say Beane beats the odds and changes baseball forever.
As I said before, Moneyball is not a movie about baseball. It's a movie about innovation and having the courage to confront conventional wisdom and capitalize on a bad situation. The appeal of Moneyball is rooted great performances by Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, but the biggest star of the film is a script penned by Steve Zaillian and perfected by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote a brilliant script for last year's The Social Network (which won him a well-deserved Oscar).
Moneyball is this year's version of Social Network, a brilliant departure from your basic summer fare, and a perfect reminder that the holiday movie season is upon us.
