Moneyball is just as much a sports movie as any other. It’s got the drama of winning and losing and there’s a “your job is on the line” kind of risk-taking that keeps it thrilling. But for some reason it feels different than other sports movies. Perhaps it’s because the way it approaches the sport. It approaches the game as an economics problem, but even still it isn’t a film that dedicates itself to analysis. Director Bennett Miller (Capote) has taken a story centered on a major league baseball team using stats and math formulas to recruit players and build a team on a budget and given it a heartbeat. It never tries too hard and settles into the story nicely, making for a very enjoyable movie with a sense of faith, trust, teamwork, loyalty and desire at its core to go along with an excellent lead performance by Brad Pitt.
The film is an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book of the same name and opens on October 15, 2001. It’s game 5 of the American League Divisional Series between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees. Loser goes home and the A’s lose. The point of emphasis, however, isn’t the loss, but the $39 million Athletics roster vs. the $114 million Yankees. In professional sports money buys talent and the A’s are fully aware of that fact as their team is subsequently gutted of its best players.
Before A’s manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) can think about the loss he’s already having to figure out what he’s going to do about next season as his three top players — Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen — already have their foot out the door, ready to sign contracts the A’s can’t match. With a budget $75 million less than the major market clubs, Beane is fighting a losing battle, unless he can come up with a way to beat the odds.
Going against years of baseball tradition, Beane hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Yale economics graduate that believes he’s cracked the code to building a baseball team. It’s not about having the biggest bat and the best fielders as much as it’s about the percentages, on base percentages to be specific. The film follows Beane’s radical decision to adopt Brand’s methodology (which actually uses the findings of Bill James), preaching an “adapt or die” motto that’s either going to end his professional career or make him a baseball pioneer.
The film is well acted from all corners. I don’t have a single negative thing to say. Pitt delivers the kind of performance that can be overlooked because his actions are subtle. Sure, he has a few clubhouse outbursts, but even then it isn’t about throwing a tantrum and securing an “Oscar clip.” Nothing about Moneyball reeks of trying too hard. Instead it tries just hard enough to make it all look effortless.
Jonah Hill was a question mark for me walking in, but he’s a perfect partner to Pitt. Both underplay their roles to such an extent that it brings a certain energy to the picture when they’re together. It’s proof positive an actor doesn’t need to scream their head off or bawl their eyes out to prove they can act. If anything it’s even tougher to tap into a character and make them seem real, which is exactly what Hill and Pitt have accomplished.
Philip Seymour Hoffman isn’t in the film as much as I expected him to be as A’s manager Art Howe and Robin Wright is in it even less as Beane’s ex-wife, a side story that also involves his 12-year-old daughter, giving his character one more layer rather than simply resigning him to be an ex-jock and current general manager. It would be easy to pick on this part of the story, but to exclude it would diminish Beane as a character. With it we learn he’s not only passionate about his job, but also a good father, and the story doesn’t spend a lot of time hammering it home.
The screenplay from Steve Zaillan and Aaron Sorkin hits all the right beats. I was especially happy it wasn’t loaded with too much of Sorkin’s signature dialogue, which is great, but in this film it just wouldn’t have fit as well as it does in his more politically driven pieces. Sorkin’s wit and talent to turn a phrase remains, and combined with Zaillan they make a powerful duo.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out Wally Pfister, a cinematographer that’s made a name for himself recently with Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and his recent Oscar win for Inception. Pfister is, in my opinion, one of the best cinematographers out there right now when it comes giving a film a pristine and polished look yet he keeps it authentic. I can’t imagine a better film for such a talent than a baseball movie with the lush greens of the ballpark and the long stadium corridors. But even more than that, Pfister’s blacks seem to resonate with as much color as the greens. He simply paints a beautiful canvas.
Overall, Moneyball is just plain solid and it’s hard to believe Bennett Miller hasn’t made a movie in six years since being nominated for an Oscar for Capote. And now he comes in and, excuse the phrase, knocks this one out of the park. He knows just how much to give and how much to take back. The camera occasionally moving in slowly, or quickly cutting to a close up for varied levels of impact and it’s all done seamlessly. The emotional range of the work here is excellent and it’s all done in a film that can just as easily be sold as popcorn entertainment.
