Moneyball Review

Brad Pitt looks serious about baseball in Moneyball

Moneyball
A-

A review by Frederick Cholowski

Sports movies love them or hate them they are probably always going to exist. Evan if most are predictable there are always the few who stand out from the pack. Moneyball is one of them as it manages to stay away from many of the clichés that usually haunt the genre. It also manages to deliver one of the most intriguing and insightful sports stories in a long time.

Moneyball follows Oakland A’s general manager Billy Bean (Brad Pitt) on a crusade to try and replace three of his biggest superstars after they were eaten up by other teams. Problem is that as Bean eloquently describes “There are rich teams and there are pore teams. Then there is fifty feet of crap and then there is us.” In other words they have very little money. Soon Billy finds his answer, a numbers crunching Yale graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). Together they set out to make history by looking at baseball from a pure statistics point of view without considering things such as the personalities or integrity. He then has to convince old school coach Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the rest of the world that his team full of misfits has an actual chance to do something.

The success of Moneyball is in the writing and pacing. This movie made me cheer for baseball a sport witch in my opinion is boring and mundane. It is also fueled by a script written by two of the best screenplay artists in the world Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. While amazing Moneyball runes into some problems. While the managing parts of the film are insightful and fantastic the parts that involve Bean’s family feel a little clichéd and don’t work with the overall vibe of the film. It only really slows the film down and ruins the quick pace with parts of Bean’s life that I don’t end up caring about. Even with the pacing issues the film still held my interest even through the slower portions.

Acting is key here and it is solid on all fronts. Brad Pitt is convincing as the A’s general manager searching for a winning team. He has a certain charisma that lights up the screen every that he is present. This plus a solid emotional range give him the opportunity to be an early bet for an Oscar nod. Speaking of Oscar nods Jonah Hill is fantastically subtle as Peter Brand. He kind of channels a bit of Jessie Eisenberg’s performance in the Social Network (except not quite as socially awkward or destructive). He takes a tone downed approach and it works extremely well.

On the writing front it’s great to have such a great script here. The writing and dialogue carry through one finely crafted scene to another. In the management parts of the film Sorkin’s trademark fast talking witty dialogue shines especially during a great scene later on in the film involving risky trades. That scene alone made me almost completely forgive the clichéd family drama. On the tech side the film looks and sounds good with nothing really eye popping or special. All the actual baseball scenes while well done are nothing all that special. Even so if you can get me to care about baseball it’s a good thing.

Moneyball is a fun and smart fall film made better by a great script. It manages to avoid the potholes that many a sports film has fallen in before. While this is brought down by pacing issues and family drama Moneyball is still a step ahead of many of the films that have come out this year.