Top-notch sports drama

Rating: 9/10 (26 June 2012)

Billy Beane has a problem. As general manager for the cash-strapped Oakland A's, Beane is having a hard time recruiting quality players, mainly because, with the limited budget the owner has given him to work with, he can't possibly compete with the multimillion dollar contracts being proffered by A-tier teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox. To add insult to injury, those teams keep pilfering the few decent players Beane's already got. Into the breach steps Peter Brand, a 23-year-old numbers-cruncher straight out of Yale who's devised a complex algorithm out of players' statistics that will allow recruiters to focus in on the less obviously flashy - and thereby far less expensive - players whom the Big Boy franchises have managed to overlook. The skeptics question the wisdom and efficacy of reducing team-building to mere mathematic formulas and science, but Brand's method winds up working so well that it forever revolutionizes the way major league baseball teams recruit their players.
Based on the 2003 book by Michael Lewis, with screenplay by Steve Zaillion and Aaron Sorkin and direction by Bennett Miller, "Moneyball" provides a literal inside-baseball glimpse into the inside of baseball. In many ways, "Moneyball" is a kind of grownup version of "The Bad News Bears" and every other tale of a coach who pulls together a motley crew of misfits and second-stringers and, against all odds, transforms them into a winning team. The difference is that this story has actual history behind it, recounting the 2002 season in which the A's won a record 20 games in a row (yet still lost in the playoffs). Plus, the movie finds its drama more in the behind-the-scenes wrangling among the highly skeptical managers, owners, coaches and staff than in the action on the field (indeed, most of the ballpark scenes appear as grainy clips from actual games). The intelligent screenplay avoids most of the clichés inherent in the genre - and those it doesn't avoid it somehow manages to make seem fresh and vital again. The writing also adds depth and dimension to Beane's character by occasionally flashing back to his own somewhat underwhelming career as a player in the big leagues, showing how that disappointment helped to mold him into the man he is today.
Despite the sterling quality of the writing and direction, "Moneyball" is clearly an actors' picture, and the filmmakers have recruited a first-rate cast to carry out the drama (I wonder if they used a similar algorithm for that). Brad Pitt has probably never been better than he is here as the Quixotic visionary who's such a bundle of nerves that he can't even bring himself to watch his own games. A mixture of pragmatist and romantic when it comes to the game of baseball, Beane is the perfect person to serve as iconoclast for a game whose roots lie deep in the American psyche but a game that has lost its way in recent times with its huge salaries and uncompetitive money advantages among teams. Jonah Hill is excellent as Brand, as is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe, the A's highly skeptical and understandably disgruntled manager, who initially balks at what he believes is the disastrous direction in which Beane is taking the team. Chris Pratt ("Everwood," "Parks and Recreation") and Kerris Dorsey ("Parenthood") also score in small but important roles.
There's drama and suspense aplenty in this film, with literal edge-of-the-seat excitement generated by its re-creation of the nail-biting 20th game that got the A's into the record books. But "Moneyball" never overplays its hand, never indulges in corny melodramatics or cheap sentiment to win us over to its side. In fact, it is its very restraint and subtlety - both in performance and execution - that draws us so deeply into the tale it's telling.