Moneyball
Review by Sean Lynch
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Moneyball
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Baseball movies have always fared surprisingly well in Australia. Considering it's known as America's favourite pastime and the game itself is about as entertaining as a three week long Cricket test match, films like A League Of Their Own and Major League have earned their rightful place is movie history.
However,
how will audience react to a sports movie that shows very little, if
any, actual baseball? Well, interestingly enough, pretty well.
Moneyball
is a star studded affair, with more Oscar bait attached to it than any
other sports movie in history (Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Arron Sorkin) and follows the real life tale of Billy Beane (Pitt) a
has-been superstar player prospect who turns to the fiercely
competitive world of team management.
After a heart breaking
2001 season, Beane faces a pretty dismal situation : his star players
at the small-market Oakland A's have all been poached by the big
business NY Yankees. He now left in the unenviable position of
rebuilding an entire team from scratch with a budget akin to what most
teams spend on one player lost their star players (Around $40M
compared to $115M).
With few options left, Billy takes a chance
on recruiting system based on the often dismissed theories of economist
Bill James. Together with young brain Peter Brand (Jonah Hill in one of
his final "fat roles") the unlikely duo re-examine baseball and its
conventions using a computer driven statistical analysis system.
Despite
a lack of understanding from pretty much everyone in baseball -
including the old guard, the media, the fans, and their own field
manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) - the theory of going after players
who have been overlooked or dismissed by the rest of baseball for being
too odd, too old, or injured (but who all have key skills in other
areas that have been statistically overlooked) soon starts to work.
What follows is something akin to Mighty Ducks
inside a locker room. We rarely see any of the action on the field (in
fact, Beane never attends games himself for fear of jinxing his
players) but the under dog movie values are still very much present.
The
cast is excellent, with Pitt as charismatic and watchable as ever -
while the subdued Jonah Hill does his best to defy your expectations of
him to throw an F-Bomb the audiences way.
Moneyball
loses a bit of steam towards the end, but by and large, for a film that
is literally about looking at Excel Spreadsheets it's as engrossing as
any other movie out there at the moment.
Well worth checking out sports nuts (especially those of you who have Fantasy Football or Dream Teams), the stats don't lie! 3.5 out
of 5
Moneyball
Australian release: 10th November,
2011
Official
Site: Moneyball
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: Bennett Miller
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