Perhaps more than any other sport in existence, baseball is the one Americans love to romanticize in film, and hours have been spent analyzing why, so I won't add to the discussion except to say that I think it has something to do with the pace of play. There's a lot of time to think both on the field and in the stands, and with that extra time habits are born, superstitions are invented, and rituals take shape. And although I wouldn't call myself a baseball fan, it is the sport that I attend more than any other in a given year—more a product of living 10 minutes (on foot) from Wrigley Field, one of the oldest ballparks in existence.
And because fans are as attached as players to the ritualistic and meditative ways of baseball, as well as the utterly bizarre methods by which scouts seek out new blood for their teams with a formula of accomplishments and "intangibles" (as they are called in this film), I can clearly understand why anyone coming into the sport with a computer and absolutely no regard for how much personality a player might have could be deemed a threat to everything the game is about. And that's exactly how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane was perceived when he brought in experts on Sabermetrics to rebuild his team from the ground up.
Although a select few films and performances that have been released in 2011 might get award nominations, MONEYBALL is the first (to put it in baseball scouting terms) that is the total. From the performances, to the writing—courtesy of Oscar winners Steven Zaillian (SCHINDLER'S LIST) and Aaron Sorkin (THE SOCIAL NETWORK), based on Michael Lewis' book—to the gorgeous cinematography from Wally Pfister (all three of the Christopher Nolan Batman films), to Bennet (CAPOTE) Miller's flawless directing, MONEYBALL moves by your eyes at a casual but never boring pace and simply tells us the story of the whisper-quiet dismantling of an institution.
Having a hell of year between this film and THE TREE OF LIFE, Brad Pitt plays Beane as a plain-spoken and -thinking leader who sees that the system that is keeping his team at the bottom of the barrel is broken, at least for poorer teams that have comparatively little money to spend against other franchises like the New York Yankees, which can buy the highest-profile players and stack the deck in their favor.
On a recruiting trip, Beane meets Peter Brand (a fictional, composite character beautifully realized by Jonah Hill, transitioning nicely to straight drama from last year's darker turn in CYRUS), a number cruncher working for another team who believes that there are dozens of criminally undervalued players in the league who go unrecognized and undervalued for ridiculous reasons. His primary criteria is who gets hits and who gets on base. Superstars are distractions, in his estimation.
Peter doesn't have to do much convincing, to be honest, and before long Beane is practically starting from scratch to build his new A's team. Unfortunately, the new team doesn't get off to a great start, and the film puts a great deal of the blame in the lap of head coach Art Howe (played with supreme stinging cynicism by Philip Seymour Hoffman), who refuses to play the newcomers in the way Beane and Brand want them to be. But when his hand is forced, and he does so, the results are...surprising.
What I especially loved about MONEYBALL are the flashbacks to Beane's own career as a young player, who was literally a perfect player in high school—from hitting to throwing to anticipating—and drafted into the majors without going to college. The reason Beane knows the system is broken is that his career is a shining example of how broken it is. He knows better than most that a great player in one arena doesn't always translate to another, and so he wants to build a better system. There are also some really lovely scenes with his daughter (Kerris Dorsey of "Brothers & Sisters") that probably could have been edited out, and you'd never miss them in terms of the plot, but they reveal a side of Beane's personality that is so critical that I almost wish there were more of them.
With not-so-subtle but still quite clever stylistic nods to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE NATURAL (hell, there are some shots of Pitt in which he actually looks like Robert Redford), MONEYBALL reveals a fascinating side to a sport whose coverage on film might have been described as saturation. But the biggest surprise in the movie is that it reminds us that in the end there is something indescribably magical about the game as well. What we quickly learn about the Brand character is that he isn't trying to tear down his beloved game; he wants it to be played better and with a more level playing field, so that second-tier teams can have a fighting chance against major-market titans. In the end, Brand is the biggest baseball fan in the movie, and Hill's portrayal of man who has little else outside of the game is impressive and moving.
Above all else, MONEYBALL is damn fine storytelling that never forgets that the grace and perfection is in the detail. We get into the role each player has on the team. Particularly strong is Chris Pratt performance as catcher-turned-first base player Scott Hatteberg, whose prematurely dead career is brought back to life by this new system. I also really liked Stephen Bishop as David Justice, a player deemed past his prime, who knows he only has a few years left in the game, and both he and Beane want to "squeeze the last bit of baseball out of him." There's a great scene between the two where Justice has to come to terms with this reality, and Beane tells Justice that he'd be just as useful to the team as both a leader and a hitter.
I firmly believe you don't have to care one iota about baseball to love MONEYBALL with all your heart, and from this point forward, when the inevitable lists of the greatest baseball or sports movies is compiled for whatever reason, I think this movie will rank right near the top and rightfully so. It's a winner.
