After a full decade of retirement from entering a movie theatre (the last movie I saw in a theatre was The Perfect Storm in 2000) the excitement of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill depicting Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta in the movie version of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball was enough to draw me back to the theatre late last week. I have been a fan of Lewis ever since Liar’s Poker and thought Moneyball was a well-written baseball book chronicling the inner-workings of a small budget major league franchise in a time period of great success. However, I was curious how the writers would shape the book into a screenplay, as two hours of watching actors discussing baseball trades and offering little on-field action would prove stale fairly quickly. I am pleased to report that although there were a few vexing aspects to Moneyball, on the whole it is an enjoyable movie.
The performances of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill were superb: Brad Pitt does a marvelous job depicting the real-life Billy Beane, imitating his mannerisms particularly well and capturing the struggle between the confident outer-exterior Beane superficially displays and the conflicted and insecure person battling many inner-demons he actually is. Pitt’s performance deserves Best Actor consideration, but the narrow appeal of this film will probably keep him from such accolades. Jonah Hill was outstanding in his subdued role of Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate who is a mastermind with computers and well-versed in sabermetrics. Hill’s natural timing and wit make him funnier than the role likely was intended, as Brand was characterized (unfairly if you know the real-life DePodesta) as a stereotypical computer geek with little personality, charm, or sense of humor. Hill provides much of the film’s hilarity and his fantastic effort should provide him more chances to continue as a dramatic actor in his career, rather than being strictly limited to comedy.
There are many strong scenes in this movie, but the last scene, when Billy Beane travels to Boston after the 2002 season to visit with John Henry, the new owner of the Boston Red Sox to discuss potentially taking the job as general manager of the team, was exceptionally well-done and the dialogue was first-rate. Henry, a highly successful commodities trader in real-life, says “In their minds, this is threatening the game. It’s threatening the way that they do things. Nobody wants to become obsolete and expendable. (paraphrased)” The dialogue between Beane and Henry, while embellished a bit for dramatic purposes, gave a wonderful insight into the thinking at the time and the paradigm shift, or fear of it, that was occurring throughout baseball. Professional sports are copycat industries, when one organization has success with a certain formula, you can be sure 10 other teams will be shifting to those ideals the next off-season – this scene perfectly encapsulates this theory, as Henry is trying to hire Beane as the Boston general manager to implement the same principles that had shown success earlier that year in Oakland. This was easily the best scene of the movie for me, as the dialogue was spot-on and the integrity of the scene was fantastic.
While most of Moneyball was a success, there were a few aspects that bothered me. In the movie, Billy Beane has a daughter “Casey” who is far too smart and mature for any 12 year old girl. The young actress, Kerris Dorsey, does a nice job but the part was incredibly bland and a cliché example of the divorced father-daughter relationship too often repeated with Hollywood screenwriters. This storyline was forced into the script, as it was not mentioned anywhere in the book, and made the film an additional 10-15 minutes longer than it needed to be. Cutting this storyline from the film would have helped the overall flow and was the gristle of an otherwise solid script.
Secondly, I was worried prior to entering the theatre that the movie would portray baseball scouts as unintelligent and obsolete in this era of baseball. While sabermetrics has certainly found a permanent home within baseball front offices, most still acknowledge the value of traditional baseball scouts. I certainly understand the need for the writers to play up the “us vs. them” storyline, but they were far too harsh and dismissive of scouts at the expense of alienating many baseball fans, myself included. Perhaps I am a bit sensitive to this depiction as I fancy myself a baseball scout, but I believe the writers would have done better focusing on the differences between traditional scouting methods used by scouts and the theories and concepts used by sabermetricians while eliminating the hostility between characters and the underlying air of superiority by the Beane and Brand characters.
Finally, there was not one mention of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito in the movie except a scene in which Hudson is shown getting pounded as the Oakland starting pitcher in their 20th consecutive victory. For informational purposes, in 2002 when this movie takes place, Hudson went 15-9 with a 2.98 ERA and 1.26 WHIP with 152 strikeouts, Zito went 23-5 with a 2.75 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with 182 strikeouts, and Mulder went 19-7 with a 3.47 ERA and 1.14 WHIP with 159 strikeouts. I think a solid argument can be made that the fantastic seasons of these three “Ace” pitchers probably had more to do with Oakland’s success in 2002 than the signings of Scott Hatteburg and Chad Bradford, or trading for John Mabry and Ricardo Rincon. I find it a large oversight that the film does not mention the three players most responsible for the team’s success and rather disrespectful to the players themselves.
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In general, I enjoyed Moneyball. It has its flaws as I have mentioned, but it was generally entertaining. I think the casual baseball fan will appreciate this film more than a “nerdy” fan like myself; I say this because the casual fan will relish the behind the scenes look at what a general manager does and the interactions between the front office and players, whereas the more hardcore fan will be exasperated at times with the liberties the film takes as well as the numerous historical inaccuracies. I recommend this movie more as a rental than as a must-see theatre experience but Moneyball is an overall solid film nonetheless.
Overall Grade-> 3.5 Fedoras out of 5
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