Moneyball - Review
pepper - december 11
LIKE ALL TRULY ICONIC
sports movies,
Moneyball is not just about the sport in question (which in this case is American baseball) but is a moving story of one man’s dogged determination to change the nature of the game when faced with insurmountable hurdles.
Moneyball is the intelligent and fascinating true story of failed baseball player Billy Beane (played to perfection by the ever-underrated Brad Pitt) who is now the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, a San Francisco Bay area team.
In this era of baseball, circa 2001, the much wealthier teams like the New York Yankees are able to buy players while poorer teams like the Oakland A’s don’t have the financial backing to replace them.
With players being poached by wealthier teams, and with his hands tied behind his back financially, Beane seeks a different approach.
He hires a young, geeky, overweight Yale graduate Peter Brand (played with surprising dramatic subtlety by Jonah Hill) who eats baseball statistics for breakfast and has a revolutionary theory where some players are overvalued because of their pay packets, others are undervalued and overlooked.
Sourced purely by a statistic model created by Brand, it is these undervalued players that Beane now recruits with the noble and personally motivated goal of changing the game forever.
With an extraordinary supporting cast (punctuated by a sulking and arrogant Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the Oakland Manager, Art Howe), shrewd direction from Bennett Miller (Capote) and accessible dialogue from some of the best writers in the business (Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin) this is a moving masterpiece from start to finish. Don’t miss it.
review by libby munro