True to the ideas behind the book. Inspiring in its own way. Interesting for nearly anyone.

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2014)

Considering what type of book this movie was made from, the filmmakers did quite a good job. I like the movie because I happen to be a big fan of the baseball stats logic behind it and the original book is probably my favorite book. The book is primarily geared for people who are interested in baseball, business, or logical thought. However, I have seen people who are interested in none of these topics enjoy the movie. The focus is mostly on Billy Beane and Peter Brand's (who's real name is actually Paul DePodesta, but they switched it for some reason) thought process and technique for building a successful baseball team with very little money. It's not your typical inspiring sports movie, which I find to usually be incredibly predictable and corny, but it is inspiring in its own way. Mostly it inspires thoughts of earth-shattering discoveries and introduces the notion that money is not the most powerful force in the game of success. The events behind this movie have changed baseball scouting and management drastically to the present, and it's pretty cool how to see how it happened. The movie is like the book in the ideas that it presents, but the presentation of the ideas is different. In the book, Michael Lewis could just put a table in the text or describe thirty years of baseball stat analysis in a chapter, but you can't do something like that in a movie. It just doesn't hold the audience's attention. The movie gets the same ideas across by using the head scout and the manager, Art Howe, as antagonists that don't believe in the ideas that Billy and Peter put before them. It also concentrates on how Billy relates to the players in ways that are incredibly unconventional for a GM. So it manages to get the results that are better shown by stats without stats, if that makes sense. The only scene that I felt like was not well converted into movie format was the trade deadline phone call scene. There are many external people involved and it is very easy to get confused by it. That part in the book is quite good, but it probably could have been left out of the movie. On the contrary, a scene that I thought was better presented in the movie than the book is the scene where Peter shows Billy all of the underrated data and players that they can use to build a team for a dirt cheap price. The idea itself is almost impossible not to believe in because the results of it are still being formed and there are a plethora of stats to prove that the system works. Results of it are even shown in the movie in the scenes that show actual games. It's a pretty good watch for anyone that doesn't mind having to pay attention for two hours, and overall, it's quite interesting. I would say to potential viewers, don't be turned away from watching this if you don't like baseball or if you don't like movies with a lot of debating, because there isn't enough of either in the conventional sense to turn away anyone. Overall Rating: 9/10