REVIEWS


Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@emap.com


Moneyball REVIEWED BY MARK ADAMS


Brad Pitt invests Columbia’s behind-the-scenes baseball film Moneyball with a quiet sense of dig- nity and commitment. But while there is a whole lot of subtle drama and some elegantly staged moments, the film is too one-tone to grip and never quite as thoughtful as it appears on the surface. The casting of Pitt and Jonah Hill will aid profile


— Moneyball has been talked up as an awards con- tender for some time — but whether a clever base- ball drama can work in territories with little knowledge and/or interest in the sport is a moot point. The underlying rags-versus-riches story of a poorly funded team slugging it out against super- wealthy competition has been told before, but here Moneyball relies on character studies rather than home runs, meaning much will depend on Pitt’s star power rather than the usual clichéd sports- movie moments. Screenwriters Aaron Sorkin (on a roll from last


year’s The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian have astutely adapted Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game, which details the controversial scheme by the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane (Pitt) to turn baseball on its head by select- ing players by crunched statistics rather than old- fashioned scouting. Impressively directed by Bennett Miller


(Capote), the film sees Beane recruit nerdy Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Hill), who has formulated a defiantly complex formula to pick a team (inspired by baseball statistician Bill James’ sabermetrics, which analyses players through


n 10 Screen International at the Toronto Film Festival September 10, 2011 GALA


US. 2010. 126mins Director Bennett Miller Production companies Columbia Pictures Producers Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz, Brad Pitt Executive producers Scott Rudin, Andrew Karsch, Sidney Kimmel, Mark Bakshi Screenplay Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, based on a story by Stan Chervin Cinematography Wally Pfister Editor Christopher Tellefsen Production design Jess Gonchor Music Mychael Danna Main cast Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt, Kerris Dorsey


empirical evidence and statistics). Between them, the pair start rebuilding a team for the A’s 2002 season. The film’s choicest moments come as Beane and


Brand sit in a room full of grizzled seen-it-all, done- it-all scouts and baseball experts — the former heartbeat of the old recruiting system — and tell them which players they will be bringing in. For a moment the film looks like it might be


heading into Bad News Bears and Major League ter- ritory as it appears a bunch of unwanted misfits are to be the core of the new-look team. But shrewdly Moneyball spends little time with the players, instead dwelling on Beane — who had failed as a pro-player himself, but worked his way up the scouting ranks — and his relationship with Brand as they look to change baseball forever. And while that core concept sounds dramatic,


in fact the film potters along in an engagingly scat- tershot manner offering up some nice bits of dia-


logue rather than any action or emotional highs. Beane is estranged from his wife (played in a one- scene cameo by Robin Wright) but close to his guitar-playing daughter (Dorsey) and has a quirk that he refuses to watch games for fear of jinxing the team. But these fragments are the nearest we get to any real character insight. Pitt is watchable and engaging as the fast-talk-


ing and committed Beane, adopting his Ocean’s 11 quirk of eating and drinking in pretty much every scene, and while Hill is spot-on casting as the chubby and nerdy baseball buff, there is no sign of any kind of personal life. Philip Seymour Hoffman (who also worked with the director on Capote) fea- tures as the team’s shaven-haired coach Art Howe, but is largely wasted in a role that asks him to argue with Bean a little but spend most of the time in the dugout watching his team. Sports fans may get a kick from the behind-the-


scenes machinations that drive pro baseball — and baseball fans may well love the obsession with statistics — but the film eschews any real attempts at traditional dramatic arcs, content simply to move along at a gentle pace, trading on attention to detail, performance and smart dialogue. As Moneyball reaches its climax, the film-mak-


ers cannot resist a couple of home-run moments — what baseball movie would be complete with- out one? But the film never surrenders its determi- nation to make the backroom boys the ‘heroes’, rather than the overpaid players. But while it is intriguing and beautifully presented and features a mature and compelling performance by Pitt, Moneyball is oddly never as engrossing as the sub- ject matter suggests it should be.


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