One of the more ironic things I've experienced in life was that no matter how often I was teased by my far more athletic and popular peers for being a comic book-reading, science fiction-obsessed nerd, whenever a certain sport's season rolled around, it was always "fantasy baseball" this and "fantasy football" that.
For the uninitiated, fantasy sports consists of hardcore fans getting together during the regular season, drafting their own "fantasy team" of actual players from an American sports league, and they score points based on their players' statistics.
Think "Magic: The Gathering" for jocks.
And that irony I mentioned earlier? Just how nerdy can one get by gathering together and spending hours babbling about statistics and points? They might as well be doing this in their parents' basement while drinking Shasta and listening to Danny Elfman music (yes, us true nerds can stereotype too, what's up?!).
But there was one man in particular whose interest in statistics changed the game of baseball dramatically. His name was Billy Beane, a former baseball player turned General Manager of the Oakland Athletics whose method of drafting players based on their stats rather than their youth and asking price shook up Major League Baseball in ways that no one would have ever expected. And though a true story about numbers and statistics may seem boring on paper, director Bennett Miller and co-scribes Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian likewise did the impossible with the wholly engaging baseball drama Moneyball.
Drafted right out of high school to play in the major leagues, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) never got the lucky streak he experienced as a teenage ball player. After two decades in the game, Billy became the GM of the Oakland A's, a franchise suffering from both a low budget and an embarrassing win-loss ratio, exacerbated by a crushing loss from the Yankees in the 2001 postseason.
Despite his scouts' insistence, Billy believes that a winning team shouldn't be based on looks, youth, or star power. Determined to build up his team from scratch without the need of a Yankees-sized budget, Billy hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale-educated economics major and Cleveland Indians statistician, as his new assistant GM.
Peter implements a sabermetric approach to drafting players based on their on-base average, and that means hiring players who are no longer highly desirable by the big guns, such as catcher-turned-first baseman Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond), and longtime outfielder David Justice (Stephen Bishop). This doesn't sit well with either Billy's scouts or Athletics manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who already has a beef with Billy over a contract dispute and continuously disregards Billy's instructions for the lineup.
Even though the Athletics initially perform less than admirably under Billy and Peter's new approach, soon enough the team defies the odds and begins an unexpected winning streak. Billy now does all he can to ensure his team's resurrection, all as they rocket towards the World Series.
Any average moviegoer will tell you that if you want feel-good, spirit-rising cinema, you look no farther than baseball movies. After all, classics like The Natural, Field of Dreams, Pride of the Yankees, and (oh, what the hell) The Sandlot are clear examples of good old-fashioned, uplifting yarns about America's favorite pasttime, but who thought that you could count amongst their ranks a movie focusing primarily on not the actual action itself, but the business and number-crunching of the sport?
Oscar-nominated director Miller (Capote) and Oscar-winning screenwriters Sorkin (The Social Network) and Zaillian (Schindler's List) certainly thought so. Adapting Michael Lewis' nonfiction book of the same name, Moneyball is a brilliant exercise in excellent performances, character development, and masterful dialogue (which, if you saw last year's mindblowing Social Network, is Sorkin's specialty).
And those three attributes are brought to you onscreen thanks to a one-two punch in the form of Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, making the film their show and their show only. Pitt (who I constantly argue is a master actor unfairly labeled as a mere pretty face by some critics) is terrific as a motor-mouthed salesman of a General Manager whose unsuccessful past in the big leagues motivates him to make sure no current players make the same mistakes he did, all as he tries to balance out both reviving the Athletics and being there for his supportive daughter (played by a solid Kerris Dorsey).
The bigger delight than Pitt, however, is Hill playing Billy's soft-spoken statistics guru (a composite of a couple of Beane's real-life advisors). Only known for his roles in raunchy stoner flicks or sex comedies, Hill's first major dramatic performance is an absolute knockout, thanks especially to his fabulous camaraderie with Pitt and his understated demeanor amongst all of the craziness around him. It's an exemplary performance that's well-deserving of award season recognition (the same goes for Pitt).
Because the two leads own the show, the rest of the cast are pretty much relegated to window dressing, albeit very good window dressing. Pratt, Bishop, and Bond make the most of their roles as the new players Billy places all of his statistical faith on. Robin Wright does okay in an extended cameo as Billy's supportive ex-wife, but the most disappointing is the usually amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman (who won a Best Actor Oscar for director Miller's Capote) as the team manager with a chip on his shoulder. While he certainly isn't bad in the role, it's nothing spectacular either, lending the (well-deserved) spotlight to Pitt and Hill.
The script and the direction are marvelous, with the filmmakers handling the verbal fireworks with aplomb, and while Sorkin's dialogue doesn't possess the raw ferocity that was so prevalent in his Facebook epic, it's still incredibly effective and everything ranging from the great cinematography and the dramatic timing to Mychael Danna's wonderfully low-key musical score and the well-crafted characterizations.
While some may consider a full two hours of home runs and grand slams to be a truly exciting way to watch a damn good baseball movie, Moneyball proves that, behind the scenes, there can be as much drama or even more. That is, of course, if you have the right team assembled to knock it out of the park.
Letter Grade: "A"
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