Brad Pitt does baseball, Jonah Hill does maths & Moneyball does depth.

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2012)

Moneyball is about baseball and mathematics.
I don't understand baseball; it seems to me to be a more complicated version of rounders but with a bigger bat, more rules and a globally renowned tournament called the World Series in which only America may enter.
As for maths, well, Mr. Barnicot will tell you it and I were never great friends.
The film is based on actual events, although I have no idea how much has been fictionalised.
But none of this matters because, beyond all of the above, Moneyball is a film about vision, about passion, about making a stand, about losing and having another go with whatever limited resources are at your disposal. It's about relationships and being bloody-minded even when the vast majority thinks you're delusional and inept but having the confidence to know, not merely believe, that you are right.
The film works because of the heavyweights putting their best work into it. Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian have written a script that can be understood by even those who have never seen a baseball diamond. It's a screenplay that is brought to life with sincere and beautifully restrained performances by its stars, Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and supporting cast, notably Phillip Seymour Hoffman. In other hands, each of these characters may have been played more emphatically and with greater decibels but the performers never veer towards pantomime. Hill is particularly engaging with his restrained portrayal of a young man with an unproven theory in an environment where he is almost universally resented.
Director Bennett Miller has delivered a film that may well slip under the radar due to sheer number of high-profile films on release at this time of year, but even if you wait for it on DVD, this is a film you shouldn't write off simply because of a lack of knowledge of sport.
Let me start again. Moneyball is about a baseball team with no money to buy players, mutinous staff and a General Manager who brings in a kid with a degree from Yale and a notion that nobody but the GM wants to hear. Forget the baseball. Go with it and be inspired by a man with determination and a great understanding of that old fashioned ideal: Loyalty.
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