Moneyball is a film that came along at a time when I was really starting to respect Brad Pitt as an actor. He was starting to choose very good projects to become involved in, which made me want to see him more and more in film. I had always wanted to see Moneyball, and I am very happy to have just watched it for the first time because now I plan to watch it over and over again until I know it by heart.
Moneyball is based on the true story of how the general manager of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane, used computer analysis to assemble a winning baseball team on a tight budget. It is even said in the film that using this tactic flies in the face of what baseball scouts have done for over a hundred years. This movie raises many excellent questions, and definitively gives excellent answers to those questions. Are players really worth the money that they are getting paid? Do teams really pass on signing a pitcher because he throws funny? Do age and off-field antics really tell you how good a player is? Well, just because a player is not getting paid good money does not mean he is a bad player. Yes, that pitcher may throw funny, but he gets racks up strikeouts with his pitches. It does not matter to Billy Beane what a player does in his personal life, there is only one thing that matters to him: if you have a good OBP (on base percentage), you can play for the ball club. If Scott Hatteberg does not know how to play first base, then teach him. It is all about the basics with Beane, but nobody else sees that.
Brad Pitt plays Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane. As I mentioned before, this film came along at a time when I was really starting to admire Pitt's work as an actor. I truly believe that in the past few years, he has become true Oscar potential with whatever project he gets involved in, and he proved that when he won the Oscar for 12 Years a Slave as one of the producers on the film. He plays Beane as cool and confident, yet always having this undercurrent of fear that his plan might not work out. While I have not seen Brad Pitt's entire filmography, I can honestly say that of the films of his that I have seen, his role as Billy Beane is my favorite of his.
Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, an economics major from Yale University, who also gets appointed as Assistant General Manager. I was quite pleasantly surprised with Jonah Hill in this movie. He is mostly known for his comedy which, except for a couple of exceptions, I am not a fan of. However, what I loved about his role in this movie is that he is in many ways the voice of reason for Billy Beane. He teaches Beane that the goal is to get talented players who are undervalued. Not to take anything away from Brad Pitt, but I believe Jonah Hill makes Brad Pitt better in this movie because it really is the back-and-forth between these two actors that is the focus of the film. With this film, and with Wolf of Wall Street, Jonah Hill has become a very good dramatic actor.
It was very bittersweet to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in this movie. He was one of my favorite actors. The bright light that the magic of cinema casts on the world is a bit less bright without his talent. In Moneyball, he plays Oakland A's manager Art Howe, who does not agree at all with the way Billy Beane is running things. He manages the team and fills out the lineup card the way he wants to because he feels he knows better than some executive that sits behind a desk all day long. Hoffman is perfect at playing the old-school, stubborn, cranky manager who plays the game the way he wants to play it.
I have unknowingly become a fan of director Bennett Miller. I was recently going through my movie collection and I realized that, without my knowledge, I have come to own all three of his films. He does such great work with character relationships in his movies. What he does with Moneyball is really quite interesting because he does not just make a movie about the sport of baseball, he makes a movie about the business aspects of baseball. That is one of the many reasons why this movie is as great as it is.
I absolutely loved this movie in every aspect. As much as I love film, it is very rare when I love a movie so much that I cannot take my eyes off it. That is what Moneyball did to me. If you are a fan of sports, or even sports history, I highly recommend you watch this movie. You will not regret it.
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