Baseball film adroitly parallels history
Who would you want to play you in a movie? Well, if you’re Billy Beane and you answered “Brad Pitt,” your dream just came true.
In his latest film, Pitt plays Beane, a baseball-prospect-turned-baseball-flop who finds success as a scout and eventually as a young head of a big-name franchise.
Moneyball, adapted from a 2003 nonfiction best-selling book by Michael Lewis, depicts Beane’s career as a Major League Baseball general manager for the Oakland Athletics.
What makes his career special enough to be made into a movie? To put things in perspective, he assembled a winning lineup in 2001 with just $41 million.
The New York Yankees’ payroll was $138 million the same year.
The Beane-centric film is a unique glimpse into the business of running a ball club. Baseball fans — especially Oakland Athletics fans — should be pleased to see this front-office side of America’s pastime portrayed on the big screen.
Frustrated after losing in the playoffs and losing some of his best players to free agency, Beane faces career-defining choices during the offseason. The team owner refuses to increase payroll, preventing Beane from keeping key players. Grumpy sports agents force Beane to give up on coveted free agents, and the baseball scouts working for him refuse to accept any new ideas Beane proposes.
Pitt’s performance as Beane is laced with violent tendencies (he flips desks, throws chairs, breaks radios) and an understandably intense passion for baseball. Sporting a bit of a slimy hairstyle and always clad in Nike or Reebok clothing, Pitt gives off a sleazy, yet loveably smart-minded, vibe. He’s not too stoic here, as he was in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. While he takes his work seriously, it’s also clear he is a fun competitor.
And in a refreshingly dramatic role, Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, the young numbers-obsessed baseball analyst who transforms Beane’s way of bolstering his baseball franchise.
Brand is based on Paul DePodesta, who served as Beane’s assistant general manager from 1999 to 2003. For personal reasons, DePodesta did not allow his name to be used in the film.
Regardless, Hill mixes it up with this role. He’s not trying to get a girl’s attention all the time or acting like a 20-something fool (see: Superbad and Funny People). Here, he portrays someone who knows how to analyze players based on numbers, has an economics degree from Yale and is eloquent enough to have Beane buy into his analytical, number-heavy theory on winning — dubbed “sabermetrics.” Sabermetrics analyzes baseball players based strictly on their statistics and performance — no “ego” or popularity is taken into account.
Though the performances are solid, adapting Beane’s various ventures, challenges and successes is too much for film. The first half of the film tediously builds up the sabermetrics approach and dramatizes the odds working against Beane’s new system. Veteran scouts and coaches hate the changes Beane enacts, and they want to make it known. But arguments bog the film down. It’s understood pretty clearly from an early point that the odds are working against Beane. Too bad the point is driven home a little too far.
Seeing a record-breaking win streak depicted is exciting, but it gets a little stale after 10 minutes. Twenty consecutive wins is nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s an aspect of the film that could have been more condensed. As ironic as it might seem, wins can get redundant, at least in film.
Respected writers Steven Zaillian (American Gangster, Gangs of New York, Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, The West Wing) penned the screenplay and Bennett Miller (Capote) directed.
Nicely constructed by Zaillian and Sorkin, the relationship onscreen between Beane and Brand keeps the film mostly fresh, as Beane adopts Brand as a mentee and confidante. Any lull in the film breaks when the two interact, whether Beane is calling Brand a “knucklehead” or ordering him to notify a player that he has been traded away from the team.
Though the film mostly just features Pitt and Hill, it has other noteworthy players. Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation) also gives a strong performance as Scott Hatteberg, a catcher-turned-first-baseman who is given a second chance at success in the majors. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, meanwhile, is impressively unrecognizable as the portly and bald-headed team manager Art Howe.
As a whole, the movie features an abundance of actors and strong writing, but non-baseball fans might get bored. Statistics tend to bore, as does the film at certain points.