Though the term is never used, Moneyball is about sabermetrics, which is the practice of analyzing baseball purely on statistics, focusing not on players’ perceived talent but their hard numbers as a predictor of future performance. If anything about that sentence makes your eyes glaze over, you wouldn’t be alone, but actually Moneyball is a mostly enjoyable sports drama.
The movie is based on the best-selling book that recounts these true events. It’s Fall 2001, and Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, has a major problem. Not only have the A’s just lost the American League Championship, their three best players have been bought up by richer, more successful teams. Baseball is a rich man’s game, and as a small market manager, Billy can’t raise enough money to field a competitive team.
Then Billy meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Yale-educated kid with a head for on-base percentages. Peter is a believer in sabermetrics, and tells Billy that a successful ball team can be constructed by purchasing lower value players with good stats. Billy hires Peter away from the Cleveland Indians, and the two go to work finding players.
Billy may be convinced, but nobody else is, especially the scouts, who think baseball is about the intangibles each player brings to the field. They’re flabbergasted when Billy proposes they hire nerve-damaged, washed up, or just plain weird-looking ball players. And even when Billy gets his way, he can’t convince manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to play the team the way he and Peter have built it. As the new season begins, and the A’s play badly, then worse, Billy and Peter’s challenge to prove themselves becomes tougher and tougher.
Moneyball is an odd duck. For many reasons, I think it’s the kind of movie people will either love or hate. The script, by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, is full of the long, pseudo-inspiring monologues that are typical of Sorkin’s work. Buried in the slick negotiations, management pressures and obsession with winning is a strong message about believing in and being committed to your ideas. I personally like Sorkin’s writing, but if you weren’t a fan of TV’s The West Wing or Sports Night, this movie will grate on you.
The direction by Bennett Miller is a bit odd, as well. A sequence near the end very nearly copies the style of Ken Burns’ famous documentary Baseball. Whether that’s deliberate or not, it’s a jarring shift in tone, as if Miller has suddenly realized he’s spinning his wheels and wants to make something happen. Luckily, however, he manages to recover.
The cast, especially Pitt and Hill, are great, but in the end there is a strange flatness to these characters. We connect with Billy as we learn his backstory, and we want him to succeed, but we are told so often that baseball is bigger than any one man that we begin to believe it, which hurts the film. There’s only so much Billy or anybody else can do before it becomes an exercise in wait-and-see.
If you’re a baseball or Brad Pitt fan, Moneyball will be a must-see. Others will probably like it. But if you yourself are into sabermetrics, you’ll probably wait for the box-office statistics to tell you whether it’s any good or not.
Tags: movie review
About the author: David Raitt
David Raitt is a writer and lover of pop culture. He lives in Oakville. He has also worked as an actor for The Second City, and has written, produced and performed his own sketch comedy, including the Canadian Comedy Award-nominated ALL THE RAGE. Semi-retired from performing, he still teaches improv and communications skills to students and corporate groups through his association with The Second City. Check out Dave's website at http://davidraitt.com
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