Viewed in
2011
Formats
Movie theater
Premise
Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the Oakland general manager who started the sabermetrics revolution in professional baseball.
Liked
The performances.
Disliked
The lack of sabermetrics.
Thoughts
I really enjoyed the performances, led by Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Pitt was very charming and likable as a quirky, stubborn, irritable GM with a chip on his shoulders. It was fun seeing his character think outside of the box and usurping the old guard. Hill succeeded in creating a character who's nerdy yet easy to root for. Hoffman was strong as ever playing the manager who refuses to play along with Beane's unusual team-building strategies.
As a sports flick, it worked. The audience cheered for the team and Beane. The actions and tactics and obstacles were easy to understand. I could tell quickly it was still an underdog story, but the characters were fleshed out and I found myself swept up in the emotions of exciting/triumphant baseball moments.
I never read Michael Lewis' book, which this film was based on. But from what I could tell, that novel was more than about Billy Beane. It touched on Bill James' impact on the game and sabermetrics. As a sports nerd, I was more interested about the intricacies of how this advanced stats came to be. Sadly/wisely, this film eschewed that stuff, mainly focusing on Beane's character and simplifying moneyball to just On Base Percentage. This probably made this film more accessible to the majority. But it made me feel a bit gipped. Folks hoping to dive into that geeky stuff will have to look somewhere else. I guess I could just read the damn book.
Overall, it was a well-executed baseball movie with an interesting true story angle. But personally, this was not the story I was looking for.
What I would change
Nothing.
