Brad Pitt and co. get the job done

Rating: 8/10 (29 September 2011)

For a movie where the most memorable line is "How can you not be romantic about baseball?", Moneyball is surprisingly unsentimental. Granted, it features its fair share of rousing montages, some glossy cinematography courtesy of Inception's Wally Pfister and a quietly wistful score, but – and this should be made very clear to prospective viewers – it's not your typical, inspirational sports flick.
Then again, Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics didn't exactly conform to the typical underdog narrative. After suffering a tough loss to the New York Yankees that eliminated them from the playoffs and losing their three star players, the A's began to drastically rebuild their team by putting numbers and stats over perceived star power, hoping to compete with their better-budgeted rivals by taking players that, for various reasons, were undervalued by others. They went on to win their division in a year highlighted by a record-making, 20 game win streak, only to be defeated, once again, in the early postseason. Not quite a storybook ending. Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who reworked a script by Steve Zaillain, are bold enough to not sugarcoat or ignore this anticlimactic finish (in one scene, Beane contends that a failure to win the World Series would mean all of their hard work has been wasted); fortunately, they're also savvy enough to pull it off. This risk represents one of many elements of Moneyball, from Brad Pitt's comically short and to-the-point take on the traditional locker room motivational speech to emotional moments that are understated rather than melodramatic and grand, that transcend or avoid the clichés that usually plague the genre. The film-makers care about telling the story they've been given instead of tweaking it to make it more crowd-pleasing. The result is an effervescent and keenly observed portrait, imbued with nostalgia and optimism in equal measure, of America's Favorite Pastime.
In another daring move, Moneyball takes viewers off the field and focuses the majority of the action behind-the-scenes, largely confining the actual games to effective and well-edited montages that intercut real footage, both visual and audio, with recreations. The business side of baseball has rarely been portrayed on film in great detail, and such subject material could easily have led to a dull, textbook-dry movie. Enter Aaron Sorkin. Though his dialogue here isn't as knock-you-down, 99 mph-fastball quick as in The Social Network, it still zips along effortlessly, drawing both humor and drama out of situations where you'd expect to see neither. He avoids sentimentality and leaves room for audiences to judge the events and the characters for themselves.
Still, the indisputable MVP is Brad Pitt. Over the years, he's proved himself to be much more than a pretty face, tackling challenging, complex and (usually) supporting roles when he could have simply coasted on his heartthrob status, and 2011's combined one-two punch of The Tree of Life and, now, Moneyball can only further cement his reputation as one of those rare actors with star power and talent in equal measure. In arguably the best lead performance of his career, Pitt portrays Billy Beane as flawed and decidedly human, a pleasant contrast to the bigger-than-life, almost saintly geniuses that frequently dominate sports movies. Outwardly, he's competitive, shrewd and stubborn almost to the point of arrogance, a forceful and assertive presence in the A's organization, but on the inside, he's plagued by doubts (what if this gamble doesn't work the way he'd imagined?) and regrets (he passed on Stanford to sign with the New York Mets only to crash and burn as a player at the major league level). He's a caring father to his 12 year old daughter, Casey, played with surprising aplomb and believability by Kerris Dorsey, but a divorce from her mother (Robin Wright, in a role that could've been filled by an extra) suggests that his personal life has seen its share of bumps along the way. Pitt sinks into this character with verve, and there isn't a moment when his performance feels unnatural or actor-ly. It's a work of subtlety, perhaps too quiet to earn him the Oscar attention many have started talking him up for, but worthy of notice nonetheless.
Also deserving of a shout-out is Jonah Hill who plays it straight to admirable results, while also garnering some deadpan laughs. As Peter Brand, a fill-in for the real-life Paul DePodesta, who gives Beane the idea to run his team using sabermetrics and subsequently becomes an assistant to the general manager for the A's, Hill provides an ideal nerdy but not socially-inept (thank God) foil to Pitt's more boisterous jock.
As a huge baseball fan (Nats and/or Rangers, anyone?), I went into Moneyball with mixed expectations. What I wanted was a tribute to baseball, an homage, if you will, that captures the complexity of the game, the constantly simmering tension, the exhilaration and feeling of unity and camaraderie that has me and other die-hards hooked. However, the possibility that it would actually accomplish this seemed dim. It seems fair to say that baseball's glory has faded a bit. America no longer seems as infatuated with the sport as in decades past, and Hollywood has been no different. The last well-received baseball movie was The Rookie in 2002. Since then, any offerings, let alone good ones, have been few and far in between. Also mixed in with that hope and skepticism was the fear that I'd get too caught up in noticing minor inaccuracies and technicalities to truly appreciate the movie, though had it been genuinely not good, that would've been a different story. It's a testament to the quality of Bennett Miller's film that, at some point pretty early on, my critical eye relaxed and I allowed myself to get caught up in the tale of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. The fussing and nitpicking can be left to the real experts. It wasn't perfect, but I had a blast nonetheless.