'Moneyball' - Movie Review

"ADAPT OR DIE"

“Who’s Fabio??”  - If you watch Moneyball  just to hear this line (which almost made me piss myself) I guarantee you'll walk away with a smile on your face!

So let’s say you’re an avid sports fan who enjoys a sports flick but you have just one complaint - what would that complaint be? 

If you can answer this question I'd say you are a sports fan. And if you can't? Well then you probably call Rollerball your favourite sports movie. 

The answer to the question is that sport movies are just like modern political parties – they seek to catch all with cliche, repetitive stuff. Moneyball has shades of this (it's an underdog story, it features a team in disrepute, it has a rousing 'one for the gipper' scene, a cocky troublemaker and a hard nosed underdog protagonist) but it also bridges a gap between what sports movies are and what they can be.

So what is Moneyball then? Well as Bard Pitt comments, it's centred around the question of "what's a winner, what's a loser?" It's the story of the Oakland Athletics and GM Billy Beane's reinvention of baseball. The issue which exists is that Major League Baseball doesn't have a salary cap and so fat cats like the Yankees can rob poorer teams of their talent. So instead of trying to play the money game Beane seeks to play the numbers game. First things first he hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to be his assistant and then they go about finding cheap players with defects who'll fit the statistical bill for what Beane and Brand believe is needed to get a victory. Unconventional film huh? Since when is a movie based on the relationship between a GM (Pitt) and his assistant (Hill)? And since when is a successful sports movie about what's happening off the pitch rather than on the pitch?

My guess is only established screenwriters like Aaron Sorkin get to sit down, write this screenplay and think, “I’m going to make some money!” And I'd say that after all the directing issues they had (I believe they went through three directors before they got to Bennett?) this movie really did come down to the script. The directing is fine but it isn't outstanding and it really is about the script - which smells of Sorkin's wit and intelligence.

So the movie starts at the end of the 2001 season when Beane’s team has been knocked out of the playoffs by the Yankees. It’s been a good season for the Athletics but they now stand to lose their three best players to the big clubs in the offseason - so the question is, how do they rebuild and improve if this is the way things work? Watch and see.

 

The acting is refreshing... and surprising. Well actually it's only Jonah Hill who surprised me. I can't say Pitt, Wright or Hoffman surprised me as they are at the top of the game but I almost didn’t recognize Hill! I don't think he used the word fuck once the whole movie (right?). I mean after 87 expletives in Superbad I can't help but be a little shocked by him in this. I also had him pegged for certain type casting after The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad and Get Him To The Greek. Does this mean there's hope for his past costar (and type cast teen) Michael Cera? Maybe! Actually no, there is no hope for Cera. Hill is convincing and  loveable as the socially awkward Brand and the character’s confusion at the start helps us out as we attempt to wrap our minds around his science and statistics and the day-to-day life of a MLB GM. Brand and Beane's relationship soon takes centre stage and we keep watching to see if they will pull it off. It was Brand's entrance that really captured me though - that early scene in Cleveland where Brand is introduced and we are in turn introduced to the passion he possesses for statistics rather than baseball itself - yeah, that was like bait on the end of a hook.

Not your typical Jonah Hill

I found it interesting that the movie was based closely off the book and that the actors received feedback from the people they portrayed. Stephen Bishop, who plays the veteran slugger David Justice, actually played Major League ball with the real David Justice. There was an authenticity which remained for the entirety of the movie – perhaps because they didn’t pander to the usual sport film narrative?

My Dad asked me when I showed him the movie, "Does that guy really pitch like that? Is that even allowed??" I told him that when Bradford pitched for the Red Soxs I remember watching him and he certainly did pitch like that. The authenticity of this film is fantastic!

Brad Pitt plays Beane like a boss. Relaxed and cool yet simmering with a burning passion - "yeah", he nailed it. I have come to not only respect Pitt but also admire his work. When I was younger I disliked him - yes, I was jealous of the attention he got from the ladies. Pitt’s career speaks for itself these days, Se7en, Fight Club, Snatch, Ocean’s, Troy (how can he even look good in a skirt?!), Babel, Burn After Reading, The Assassination of Jesse James (my favourite Pitt performance), Inglourious Basterds, Benjamin Button (which I enjoyed a lot more than Fitzgerald’s short story), The Tree of Life and now Moneyball. Pitt reminds me of Philip Seymour Hoffman (who also stars in Moneyball) as neither actor fits a mold. They do such drastically different roles and bring vastly different characters to life. As Beane, Pitt plays a gritty man who lives and breathes baseball. "How can you not be romantic about baseball?" Beane sums it up at the end to his dear assistant. All we see in Beane (other than moments with his daughter) is a workaholic who wants to change the game. At first though I wondered why we needed the flashbacks of Beane’s younger days but soon I realised that it gave us more insight into the man and what makes him tick.

Philip Seymour Hoffman does it again. HE DOES IT AGAIN. He's taken another role where he plays second violin. I think in Hoffman we find a man who is after creating art rather than a legacy and a mantelpiece. He plays the Athletics’s coach, Art Howe, who is awaiting a new contract and the big(ger) bucks. He's oppositional to Beane's statistics game but by the time we see him sitting in the dug out and calling on Hatteburg to pinch hit, you know he's done the job. I think someone else could've played this role but it's in the passive aggressive arguments between Beane and Howe that we see Hoffman's brilliance. It's subtle but it's Hoffman at his best.

It's interesting to note that many people who don't know or like baseball, or even sports movies, can enjoy this one, as Pitt reiterated, "it isn't really a baseball film at all." Even At The Movies host David Stratton reiterated this idea,

DAVID: Well, I'm not terribly into sports movies, obviously, because I'm not terribly into sport really so I must admit I came to see this with some misgivings because - and it turned out I didn't understand what they were talking about half the time, but luckily this is a sports movie which doesn't have too much sport on screen.

Bennett Miller directs this movie with real precision. The way he shoots the flashbacks and sets up scenes without giving the audience a mouthful of exposition is brave and well done. For example, when Beane goes to visit his daughter we aren’t informed that he is divorced (nor given any real family history except that we notice a ring on his wedding-ring finger) and so when he shows up at the house we have to read between the lines and listen carefully. I also thought the way he shot the claustrophobic, bland and down and out clubhouse was ingenious as it made us feel the weight of Beane's experiment and the club's position. Compare this also to the wide shots of Beane standing as a lone figure in an empty stadium and you really start to see why Miller must be a man going places. But how come it's taken this long for him to get back behind the camera after his Oscar winning Capote (2005)??

One issue query I have with the film is about the daughter - I'm not sure I felt her impact. The car scene at the end is lovely but I'm just not sure I felt the importance she is meant to have. I'm not saying it's better with her... or am I? I don't know, I just didn't feel it (maybe we can chalk this one up to the fact that I don't have children?).

The more I think about Moneyball the more I like it. I could make a case that the ending felt a little underdone but that could be because we are so used to seeing a shiny trophy at the end of a sports movie. I enjoyed the Boston scene and I think Miller really came through with this scene. Fenway Park is almost magical and the camera work really produces the grand aura compared to Oakland. A lot was riding on the ending and it was classy.

9/10