Sports films have the tendency to be a nauseating mix of forced inspiration and excessive dramatic struggle, taking a story and wringing out every emotion.
“Moneyball” is the antithesis of the generic sports film.
Its premise — a true story about a major league general manager who uses stats and equations to put together a team — sounds about as entertaining as C-SPAN.
Only the true baseball junkie would care about, for lack of a better word, the extremely nerdy premise. Yet with brilliant performances and a very tight, humorous script, “Moneyball” creates a story that is so engrossing the team-forming calculations are completely forgotten.
Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the general manager of the Oakland A’s, and just watched his team lose the final game of the season. Now in the offseason, his best players are being bought off by teams with more money and spending power, and he is challenged with replacing them with very little money.
After haggling with the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets one of their employees, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).
Brand, a recent graduate of Yale, holds an economics degree and a paunchy stomach and probably couldn’t make one trip around the bases, and is, needless to say, no athlete.
But Brand has an insane theory that the way the MLB is evaluating players is archaic and inconsistent. He contests that a player’s worth can come down to a certain equation — that the teams were too concerned about buying players when they should have been focusing on buying wins.
Beane buys into Brand’s radical theory and purchases him from the Indians’ staff. Together, they start to put together a team that would make the Nationals look like World Series champions.
However, Beane and Brand adhere to theory and the system, and even with public backlash and scrutiny, continue creating a completely new train of thought for baseball.
“Moneyball” works for two reasons.
The first is its script, penned by Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and Steven Zaillian (“Gangs of New York”). Combining razor sharp dialogue and frantic pacing, “Moneyball’s” script is impressively smart, and at times, borders on too clever, much like “The Social Network.”
The second, and probably most essential attribute of the film, is Brad Pitt’s performance.
“Moneyball” does an excellent job of crafting the persona that is Billy Beane by giving a background of his life and past. This enables the audience to understand why he behaves the way he does and what motivates him to take this enormous chance.
Pitt plays Beane with a confident charm that at times borders on cocky, and it is certain that he will get a best actor nod come Oscar time.
While “Moneyball” was a fascinating film, it did lack the strong finish that the audience deserved.
Instead of putting a stamp on the film, it felt almost as if the movie just faded away. Granted, it is a true story, and there is nothing that can be done about the facts, and it did feel like the film was about ten minutes too long.
Outside of the ending, “Moneyball” is a fascinating film with a strong cast and a very unique story. It is one of the few thinking man’s sports films in cinematic existence, and will be a strong contender with the Academy.