changing the game

Rating: 8/10 (1 January 2015)

I'm not a baseball fan, but "Moneyball" from 2011 held my interest all the way through. In part, this was because of the acting, and in part, because the story is so intriguing.
Brad Pitt is General Manager of the Oakland A's, and he's fighting some bad odds. He can't compete for the best players because the A's are financially constrained. He loses three stars to free agency after losing to the Yankees in the 2001 playoffs.
Unable to squeeze more money out of the owner, Beane is then approached by Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), an economics graduate from Yale. Hill believes people have been thinking about the game all wrong. It's not about stars, it's about statistics. Beane goes along with this and puts together a team that looks like a real loser, full of has-beens and players no one is interested in. But they get on base and score runs.
Beane's manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) thinks the whole idea is awful and refuses to use the players as intended. So they keep losing.
Excellent look at how thinking about things differently can give great benefits. This statistical approach has changed the game as other teams have picked up this method. It's not about the stars, the people who look good whom everybody wants. And no one knows that better than Beane, a baseball prodigy who gave up college and was picked up by a team as its new star and then choked, never living up to his potential.
An outstanding film, with Pitt giving a wonderful, understated performance. Pitt is an actor who, like many from Hollywood's golden Age, suffers from too-good looks and too much publicity about his private life. He's a solid actor who works internally and gives natural performances. Billy Beane is a perfect role for him, a man who, despite internal fears and doubts, stands up for what he believes in.
Highly recommended.