REVIEW: Moneyball

PITT STOP

To an Indian viewer, unfamiliar and perhaps indifferent to the world of baseball, Moneyball is worth a look because it stars Brad Pitt. The film seems to have made it to the Oscar shortlist too, because like cricket for Indians, baseball is almost religion for Americans. And this craze for the game makes this classic underdog-coming-out-winner film watchable, even though the plot is as dry as numbers.

Brad Pitt focuses hard in Moneyball

Based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, the film stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a losing team. This calls for tough measures, especially dropping some players and trading some (players are treated as commodities in professional baseball) on a low budget. Watching Pitt confront a room full of old men only emphasises his stunning good looks, and how he is willing to downplay that asset to play real and non-glamourous characters—'Loser Dad' as his daughter in the film sings. Elsewhere in the Oscar shortlist, Hollywood’s other Golden Boy, George Clooney, is in the running for The Descendants in which he plays a regular guy too. You can’t but admire their shunning of vanity for challenging roles.

The world Beane moves and works in is driven more by money than love for the game, and richer teams often lure away good players. Beane’s team has lost 11 games in a row and he has to rebuild the team practically from scratch. He runs into overweight, nerdy, Yale graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), who uses computers and statistic to work out the value of a player. His untested technique persuades Beane that even a team of disadvantaged players can be whipped into a winning side. In the classic narrative arc, Beane faces opposition (from traditional scouts), ridicule, defiance (from the coach), defeat and then then soaring victory that vindicates him and Brand.

Director Miller (Capote) has gone beyond Beane’s work to shine a torch at the inner life of a lonely but ambitious man, with a failed career as a player and a failed marriage; he loves his daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey), and their scenes together are fraught with unspoken tenderness. Written by the accomplished Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Gangs Of New York), who are able to insert depth, wit and honest emotion into a film that could have turned out to be too technical, boring, or worse, predictable, Moneyball is rescued from drabness by its appeal to intelligence over fandom, which makes it appealing even to those who don’t care much for sports... or sports movies.