What exactly makes this a good movie ?

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2014)

After watching this movie, I'm really amazed at it's pretty much stellar reputation. I didn't see anything here that I haven't seen a thousand times over. You might credit Moneyball for side-stepping some of the big sports-movie clichés, but I can't go as far as to call it compelling. Granted there are some very decent performances here -especially from usual suspect Hoffman- but then most characters do little more then talk about dry facts and figures. Not exactly challenging stuff for an actor. This is mostly due to a very lackluster script; there's plenty of conflict but none of it gets fleshed out in a meaningful way. Apart from one climactic sequence nestled uncomfortably far from the eventual ending, tension or drama is mostly absent. We get to see extremely little baseball, instead watching TV-screens, spreadsheets and boardrooms. Crucial points in the season pass by before you even realize the story has jumped past them. What you're left with are flashbacks that don't seem to have much connection to the present and business-meetings in which the main characters never even get challenged properly. Character development is limited to Pitt's character re-enacting scenes from Californication with his daughter for a pitiful pay-off.
I'm not a fan of baseball, so maybe lovers of the game get much more out of this then me, but I can find little to recommend here. The way I see it, Moneyball does to movie-making what I understand it does to baseball: it sucks the life out of it.