Moneyball (2011)

Seeing as how I know next to nothing about baseball, everything I know about "moneyball" is now from the movie Moneyball. So whether the movie is accurate or not I don't really know, from the general reception I guess it is, although from what I understand there are complexities that are for more detailed than what is shown in the movie. But then the movie would be boring to us normal folk. After all, Moneyball isn't a documentary, it's primary goal is to entertain. And at 133 minutes, it entertains for every single one of those minutes. I was glued to my screen.

Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the General Manager for the stuggling Oakland A's. They're ranked toward the bottom of the American League. They're losing three of their top players, and the whole team is in drastic need of an overhaul. Things start out normally enough, with Beane sitting down with his committee, trying to come up with new prospects. And seeing as I know little to nothing about baseball, and Moneyball is teaching me, I was shocked to discover that they pick guys mainly by considering jawline and body build rather than other seemingly more important issues. If a dude is fat and round faced but can hit a gazillion home runs would he not be considered? I don't know, but I found this scene fascinating.

A big part of baseball is making trades and cutting deals, and after Pitt decides what prospects he wants to pursue, that's exactly where he heads next. 'Cept the team he's dealing with doesn't seem to want to work with him on any of his prospects. He does notice that the portly fellow (Jonah Hill, if you didn't know from the description) seems to carry some importance in the way the team manager makes his decisions, so after the meeting he corners him at his desk. After picking his brain, he discovers that the portly kid is a Yale economics grad who is a big proponent of looking at stats and base percentages over anything else. He hires him shortly after. The next time he has a meeting with the committee, he shoots down their old hat techniques for finding prospects and decides to go in a completely different and damn near unheard of direction (outside of their creator, Bill James, and his books on the subject, no one has really put them into play). He starts looking at guys based solely on their stats and whether or not they can get on base. The committee is outraged, but he doesn't care. He has a plan and he's sticking to it.

And the rest of the movie is watching him stick to it. And watching him as the plan doesn't work. And then watching him when the plan starts to work. It's both a character movie and an inspirational movie. It's a movie that, as I said, kept me glued to the screen for every minute. The performances are great and the story is just as good. Bennett Miller, who's last movie was Capote, is proving to be an A-list director. Moneyball is a fresh take on a tired genre (the baseball movie), and it's definitely worth watching.

Oh, did I mention Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in this sumbitch?

RATING: 4/5