Moneyball Released 25 November 2011 Director Bennett Miller Starring Brad Pitt, Robin Wright, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt Writer(s) Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin Producer(s) Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz, Scott Rudin Origin United States Running Time 133 minutes Genre Drama, sport, biography Rating PG

58

Fails to hit a home run.

Baseball is the king of sports…….at least as far as Hollywood is concerned.

No other American sport has produced as many good movies. American football has North Dallas Forty, basketball has Hoosiers and ice hockey has Slapshot. However these are the exceptions as most of the films made about these sports have failed to spark. Baseball however has Field of Dreams, Eight Men Out, The Natural, Cobb and best of all, the mighty Bull Durham to its name.

It’s ironic that baseball has produced so many interesting films because if you actually watch the sport itself, it’s a dreadfully dull spectacle. As that great wit Homer Simpson once remarked when briefly on the wagon: “I never knew baseball was so boring without beer!” But in film-land baseball is thrilling and romantic.

It’s strange then, that Moneyball is a film about an attempt to take the romance out of baseball. It’s about the 'sabrematrics' system that was invented by Bill James. It involves managing baseball teams through use of detailed empirical data and statistics. Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the general manager of the Oakland Athletics. Frustrated by losing to teams with much bigger budgets and then seeing his best players go to these clubs, Beane is desperate for options.

He’s sick of getting the same old advice from his crusty old scouts who base their decisions on intuition. Indeed, Beane is haunted in flashbacks of his own failed baseball career despite being tipped for greatness by the same scouts. Beane is introduced to the sabremetrics theory by an economist Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). He hires Brand as his assistant and he starts building a new squad using this system. The scouts are at first bewildered and then actively hostile to the players being brought in, as is his coach Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman). However after a rocky start, the team begins to have some success. Beane knows that he’ll have to win the championship though to really show he’s changed the sport.

This is a strange concept, as a film that attempts to take the romance out of baseball doesn't really have anywhere to go with such a boring game. There’s only so many times Brand can rave about the magic of statistics before it starts getting repetitive. It would have been more interesting if it really showed how the team of misfits actually came together but director Bennett Miller is only really interested in Pitt so this is largely ignored. And in truth, Miller doesn’t have the courage of his own convictions and is forced to rely on some baseball movie staples like ‘the winning streak’ and ‘the underdog hitting the winning home run’ to liven things up.

A talented supporting cast is largely wasted. Robin Wright gets one scene as his ex-wife alongside an uncredited Spike Jonze as her new lover. A barely recognisable Philip Seymour Hoffman just growls in the background and Jonah Hill does his usual nervy guy bit. So Brad Pitt has to carry the movie himself but once again shows that he's a talented character actor trapped in the career of a leading man due to his looks. He has to resort to gimmicks such as incessantly (and unpleasantly) spitting shells from nuts into a coffee cup. Nice! Beane is essentially quite a dull character and Pitt struggles to make him sympathetic.

It's not terrible, there are some laughs especially in the early stages when Beane is shaking things up. It’s ultimately unsatisfying though and rivals the final Lord of the Rings film for the most annoyingly protracted ending ever.

Ultimately all Moneyball proves is that while it may be possible to take the romance out of baseball, it’s impossible to take the romance out of the baseball movie!

- Jim O’Connor