David O'ConnellMoneyball
November 11th 2011 03:12
Pedigree doesn’t always count for much; you’re only as good as your last film, as they say. On that basis, Moneyball comes loaded with great expectations. A long gestating project filtered through many hands and potential directors, it marks the latest adaptation by last year’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Add another Oscar-winner in Steven Zaillian into the mix as his co-writer and the potential for quality is magnified enormously.
Michael Lewis was the author of the source material, Moneyball, the story of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane’s (Brad Pitt) method of eliminating emotional reasoning and reducing the game to raw data and inferences made through deeper analysis. The trigger for Beane was meeting an underling at another franchise in 2001, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a man with less than sturdy baseball credentials. Brand boasted an economics degree but he immediately intrigued Beane with his take on constructing a competitive team without blowing out the budget.
With limited financial resources at his disposal – working within an organisation that has always been ‘small fry’ compared to cashed-up teams like the Yankees and Red Sox - Beane sought a means of bridging the gulf rendered by baseball’s absent salary cap. Against the odds, Oakland surged to another play-off series in 2002 despite having had three key players poached by wealthier opposition, before falling short in the American League Division Series.
As a long-time ardent baseball fan, and indeed an ardent Oakland A’s fan (Ok, they’re actually my second team), seeing this period brought to life with rich insights into the man who made a difference, against the odds, to the franchise’s fortunes, was a real treat. The casting of some of the major figures is uncanny, with Philip Seymour Hoffman very credible as A’s manager Art Howe, whilst Hill’s understated reading is somehow a perfect fit for Brand. Even the actors depicting players of the time are spot-on, right down to the smallest details; Chris Pratt, for example, perfectly recreates the look, stance and swing of maligned first baseman Scott Hatteberg.
Pitt doesn’t seem like the logical choice to portray Beane but through natural charm, screen presence, and with the assistance of Sorkin and Zaillian’s slick screenplay, he pulls off the role with aplomb. Director Bennett Miller, who made his debut with the Oscar-winning Capote, does a fine job of utilising the talent around him in shrewd ways and keeping the train on track.
Moneyball (2011) is a first-rate sports drama in the first instance, a fact that will keep even non-sports loving audiences hooked. It's also an entertaining, compelling account of Beane’s idiosyncratic processes. His divergent means of utilising players for specific purposes based upon statistical reasoning may have defied the generally tried-and-tested strategies employed by the hardened baseball scouts, managers and GM’s, but for better or worse it ushered in a fresh approach to the game that has altered it in a fundamental way.
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