Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: Bennett Miller
Rating: 4/5
Sports and films have always gone hand in hand, but none quite as much as baseball. America’s favourite pastime has now undergone yet another cinematic transformation, and its move from the diamond to the manager’s office has fared it very well.
Moneyball tells us the story of the Oakland A’s, a baseball team with a chronic shortage of cash and success. Blighted by his team’s inability to keep hold of its star players, general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) starts his usual process of rebuilding his plundered team.
All until he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young statistician with radical new ideas on how to build a baseball team. Beane immediately recruits him and sets about revolutionising the world of baseball and getting the title he so desires.
Yes, this is a film about statistics and the business of baseball, but don’t let that put you off. Moneyball takes exactly the right steps to make spread-sheets and number crunching look good. A carefully balanced tone and pace let Moneyball escape the tedium that could so easily have befallen it.
Moneyball also makes the wise choice of making baseball little more than a plot device, focussing more on its rounded, flawed and realistic characters more than anything that goes on out on the field of play, avoiding the cheesy melodrama that blights many of its brethren.
This is anchored by the small but excellent cast, most noticeably the dynamic duo of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Pitt quietly dominates the screen throughout, completely stealing any scene he’s in a possibly award worthy portrayal of Billy Beane. Hill also excels as Brand, especially in such an unfamiliarly demure role.
Moneyball is also massively helped by a surprisingly funny and overall great script, with co-writer Alan Sorkin’s quick, snappy and witty fingerprints all over it.
Much like its subject, Moneyball is a refreshingly calm, collected and restrained slice of sports drama that easily exceeds expectations.
Moneyball is in out now.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Moneyball