Sitting across the table and down to the left a bit sits the oddly-placed Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). He’s a tad overweight, wears Coke-bottle glasses, is noticeably nebbish-ish, vulnerable-esque. And looking at him, you just know he sorta kinda doesn’t fit as he should. Why? Well, he’s a stats man, a math goober, a guy obsessed with numbers, and algorithms, and dashes, squiggles, lines, charts, and such. And he’s pretty dang good at it. Problem is, he’s sitting in a room with baseball men, old-school baseball men; spitters, players, coaches, scouts, trainers, and, luckily for Peter, one young risk-taking manager. He’s Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), and he’s the guy who invited Brand to enter this little den of devils as they try to figure out how to build a new team for the coming season, having lost their best player and facing a daunting, losing run again.
The gang around the table are stuck in the old ways, fixated on ideas and strategies that have, meh, met with some success and failures over the years, but now are so lost in the ruts they can’t see over the sides at something new. This is where Brand comes in. Beane knows this kid has some real talent for ‘seeing’ things in numbers few people can, and so, hopes his skills for such will help him recruit a new roster of unconventional players that could mean the difference between winning and losing. Time for some crunching.
This is Moneyball, the 2011 sports drama based on real life about the unusual rise to the top of the Oakland A’s 2002 record-setting season. I say “sports drama” but it’s actually more a character piece, like an expanded one act play that focuses on the relationship between Beane and Brand, who, using Peter’s math methods, create one of the most memorable seasons in sports history. It makes this a truly fun little film that many might have passed over simply because it is a sports movie, like that Field of Dreams movie thing. Baseball. Really? Phffft.
But Moneyball is that rare combination of sports and personality that connects. The relatively simple plot feels meaty with nothing much to build on than using numbers to find good players and knowing of course that, duh, it’s gonna work ‘cuz, you know, movies. That leaves us with Pitt and Hill heaving the whole film on their shoulders and carrying us to the predictable end. But they do it with nothing you might expect, keeping both Beane and Brand wholly grounded and identifiable. So much so, the film thrives in its calm corners and subtle, almost paceless momentum. Both these actors were nominated for Oscars, if that’s important to you. They be real good at their jobs, is what I’m saying.
That’s where the hat it tipped to director Bennett Miller, who hasn’t exactly been the most prolific of filmmakers in his long career, at least as director, but did deliver Foxcatcher and Capote, two films that feel – once you know the man behind them – connected by their style. There’s a scene early on in Moneyball when Brand and Beane are in a small dimly-lit room looking over some figures and prospects Peter has compiled, and it’s genuinely inspiring, ultimately producing what amounts to the film’s central message. I’ll go out on a limb here and say this moment can’t be discounted as one of the best in the genre. It’s great movie-making, and no matter how often you see it and many others like this in Moneyball, it still resonates. You’ll know what I mean. And let me pause here while I heap credit on the actors and director – they’re working with a script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (based on Michael Lewis‘ book) so well, I mean, there you go.
Moneyball is the kind of movie you wish you could watch for the first time again. It feels warm and inviting, purposeful and lacking agenda. It focuses on people and the impacts each have on the other, and it does so without the hyperbolic over-drama and needless conflicts that seem all too present in modern movies, where soundtrack cues and inflated direction work hard to generate emotions rather than earn them. That’s where Moneyball does it right, using the same tools to tell a story not just in a different way, but in a better way. The conflicts feel organic, the hurdles in the right place, and the steady, consistent ascent of the film’s story beats account for some truly engaging moments that make this one to watch, sports fan or not.