A sports film for people who do not like sports films

Rating: 8/10 (5 May 2013)

Moneyball was a successful film with both audiences and critics, working as a strong piece of entertainment for sports fans and non-sports fans alike. Based on a book by journalist Michael Lewis, Moneyball tells the story of the Oakland Athletics, one of the poorest teams in Major League Baseball who have to rebuild after the 2001 season after losing their three best players. General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) has to rebuild with limited resources and he takes a controversial approach when he hires a young Yale economics graduate, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to use a statistical approach to find the best undervalued players and create a winning team with the players no one else wants. But the pair are up against a sports establishment within the media and within the team and it seems like a highly risky experiment that could be doomed to failed.
Moneyball works as both as sports film of an underdog going against the odds as a small team attempt to become contenders and earn a massive record and as a drama as Beane and Brand attempt to go against the system so they can cause a revolution. For someone who does not know much about baseball it was easy to follow and I could easily make comparisons to Premier League football.
For a film about statistics and mathematic calculations it still interesting and direction by Bennett Miller does inject a lot of style when looking at formulas and spreadsheets. Throughout the film it has a similar style and look to The Social Network and can work well as a double bill.
There is a find cast, Pitt, Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman being the biggest names and the highlights of the film. All of them give strong performances and along with the writing they all felt very real. They did seem to act like real people in their situation and we do get to dig deeper into Beane's character, from his relationship to his daughter and his ex-wife to his past where he was seen as a great prospect and how he is a betrayed by the traditional scouting system.
Moneyball was a very well written film, with a great look at its characters and how they acted. It was great looking at the sport for fans whilst allowing non-fans to understand the sport. It feels organic as it processes and does not have the typical ending. Whilst it does seem to have some sports films clichés of the team seeming to be useless and bad and they turn good when they are up against, but in the context of the film it works and it is based on real events. Moneyball twist the conventions of the evil statisticians trying the rip the heart out of sport and instead shows how sport science has changed, whilst still acknowledging the fans and other factors like personal characteristics. This is also a film that looks at the back room staff of a sports club, showing the detail the scenes elements instead of solely looking at the on field activities. Even if you do not like sports films it works as a look at internal politics within an organisation and as a story about defying conventional or outdated thinking.
The trailer for Moneyball marketed it as a witty, dialogue driven film in the vain of The Social Network and other Aaron Sorkin projects; but it was more a character driven drama and as a wider story about achieving with the resources you have. There are some fun lines, but on the whole the dialogue is mostly natural and down played.
Moneyball is a solid drama and it shows how filmmakers can make a project about a subject they love whilst making it accessible to people who do not know much about Major League Baseball.