Moneyball

"Would you rather get one shot in the head or five in the chest and bleed to death?"

"Are those my only options?"

Moneyball, like Social Network, is an interesting movie about a topic that should be, by conventional logic, not interesting at all. This film is about baseball statistics, but you don’t need to appreciate nor have a deep understanding of the sport to enjoy it. If you decide not to watch this movie because you don’t appreciate or know anything about baseball, that’s the same as saying you won’t watch Cool Runnings because you don’t know anything about bobsledding or won’t watch Apollo 13 because you don’t know anything about space travel. I hope you don’t make this decision as this is one of the best films of the year and you would be missing out on a great story.

The production of Moneyball was a bit of a nightmare and it seems a miracle that the finished result is as good as it is. The film adaptation of Michael Lewis’ famous novel was originally drafted by writer Stan Chervin, and when Brad Pitt became attached to the project as a producer and lead star and hired Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York) to do a new draft of the script. Steven Soderbergh (the Ocean’s films, Che, Traffic) was signed on to direct, but he wanted to do an untraditional film with player interviews and take a non-narrative approach. In June 2009, a few days before filming was supposed to begin, the picture was put on hold until they could find a new director who had the same vision as the producers. Benett Miller (Capote) was chosen as a replacement director  and recent Oscar-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Charlie Wilson’s War) was brought in to do a third draft of the screenplay. Finally, in July 2010, over a year later, filming began. After seeing the finished film, I am glad the film went through the turbulence that it did, as it prevented it from being a cash-grab adaptation of a successful book.

Moneyball is the story of the Oakland Athletics’ general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who utilizes a non-traditional approach to scouting players called “sabermetrics.” He hires Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young economics grad to be the brains of the operation and help him choose players. Beane’s decision to go against the grain is met with serious resistance from the team’s manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the older scouts who are used to picking players using more subjective measures such as how nice their face looks. When the Athletics do not perform as expected, Beane is forced to choose between staying the course and continuing to believe in his methods or cave and go back to the way things were.

Moneyball is a character sketch of Billy Beane and I am forced to wonder if he is as interesting a person in real life as Brad Pitt portrays him to be. In any case, Brad Pitt is in full-on cool-dude mode and they may as well have made this a fiction movie and called him Tyler Durden again. He is charismatic, smooth and fast-talking and controls every room he enters with his commanding presence. He pushes his belief in sabermetrics on others like a used-car salesman and isn’t afraid to cut people loose when they don’t buy into his story.

Behind all the smooth-talking, however, is man with a life of disappointment, regret and lack of self-worth. He failed in his professional baseball career, his marriage, and is constantly searching for his place in the world. The film cuts back and forth between parts of Beane’s life to give the audience a better understanding of what made him the man he is today. Your feelings towards him will turn from admiration to sympathy before the credits roll.

Like The Social Network, many changes were made in the transition from Michael Lewis’ book to film, and if you have read the book, this film may drive you insane. Peter Brand is not a real character but is a combination of Paul DePodesta and a few other characters mashed into one. Many of the events and their causes are different in the film than the book (and real life). If you have read the book, I urge you to relax your expectations and think to yourself what story this movie is trying to tell and what changes are necessary to make a movie about baseball statistics a captivating story for a broader audience.

This film is a serious Oscar contender for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. As it stands now with the films that have been released this year, I would put my money on it to win all of the above including Brad Pitt finally winning best actor. However, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has yet to come out, and many feel that Fincher got robbed last year when he didn’t win for the Social Network. It will also be interesting to see if the rabid critical praise for Drive translates into Oscar nominations. Regardless of the awards it does or does not win, I give this movie my highest recommendation and hope that you see it despite how you may feel about baseball.