Avinash's Review #5

Moneyball (2011)

Summary:

Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to assemble a baseball team on a lean budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players.

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Review:

Moneyball isn’t just a great sports movie, it’s a great movie – there’s a difference.

The great thing about this movie is that it works even if you don't follow or care about baseball. Since it does include some interludes of the actual game, however, it's helpful to err on the side of being a sports fan. The script was born from two screenwriting dynamos: Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin, who won for The Social Network, and Steven Zaillan, who wrote All The King's Men and Schindler's List, just to list a few of their impressive credits. They raise the bar for themselves with this movie, because there is nothing going on here except their dialogue, and the movie remains fantastic. Although it's not emotionally engaging in a typical way and no one gives legendary pep talks (like in Miracle), it still conveys the peaks and valleys of someone who changed an entire century-old institution. I didn't stand up and cheer at the end, nor did I shed a tear--but I still felt like I had seen something important. If anything, I would say the movie feels just a touch long, because everyone that had the power to axe moments in the script is in love with the two writers, and deservedly so.

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 By keeping it all low-key, with the big moment followed by reflection rather than celebration, Moneyball avoids becoming a self-congratulatory fairy tale and proves that, despite the complex algorithm, the human element of sports is more perplexing than the power of calculus. Philip Seymour Hoffman chips in as a brooding coach, but it's Jonah Hill, playing the boy-man Brand, who threatens to steal the show.

 Usually movie "realism" is still sensationalized, but watching Moneyball is like sitting behind a two-way mirror during a notable period in history. Moments like listening to your daughter sing a song, tipping over a Gatorade cooler, or hawking tobacco into a paper cup are no more or less important than the moment that came before or after. It turns out that the movie wins an unfair game of its own.

Rating: 8/10