Moneyball (2011)

rating: ****

the story: Billy Beane starts a revolution in baseball by putting the hard focus on stats.

the review: I was always going to watch Moneyball, but I also put it off for years.  The reason for both is the same, and that's Brad Pitt.  Pitt's one of the best actors working today, but his best work is retreating into the past, and I always thought Moneyball was the start of that.  I mean, what does Moneyball have to say about his talent, his unique charisma?  It's a movie about baseball stats!

As it turns out, plenty.  It's one of those quintessential Pitt roles.  It's a lot like his Jesse James (as in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, one of my all-time favorites).  In fact, that's the best reason to watch it.  I've got and will go into plenty of others, too, but that's the main reason, and it's the big thrust of the movie itself.  It conforms real history into a showcase performance.  You can't appreciate the art of filmmaking if you watch a movie like Moneyball and don't understand that.  I'm not talking "showcase performance" in that Pitt makes it flashy, but that it's a role that boils down the essence of a Brad Pitt performance and gives it another context.  That's a movie star.  And maybe that's why Pitt doesn't get a lot of great roles these days, because the focus had shifted far away from movie stars and onto blockbuster franchises (actual and would-be).  So far the closest Pitt's come to work like that is the unexpected success of World War Z (which I also got around to watching recently, and enjoyed to a lesser extent).

Billy Beane was the general manager of the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season the movie covers.  The A's were struggling to recover from the loss of three key players from a great 2001 campaign, mostly because of, well, money.  In fact, Moneyball is less about baseball than it is about money.  It's a Great Recession movie.  It's about a small market team struggling to remain competitive against big market teams.  The movie uses a graphic that explains the huge disparity between the payroll of the A's and the most successful franchise in MLB history, the New York Yankees.  Basically it's about the haves and the have-nots, the 1% and the lower class.  (It may be worth remembering that although athletes are paid handsomely today, more in some sports than others, and more with greater visibility, they used to do this as a side hobby back in the day, as in, for no pay.  Jim Thorpe got screwed out of Olympic glory because he played baseball for money, but these guys used to struggle on this life.  In other words, this isn't to note the irony of people playing baseball complaining about money.  Relatively speaking, Moneyball is talking about all the players making minimum wage.) 

Moneyball, in effect, is the predecessor of later movies like The Big Short (2015).  In that sense it's also relevant to speak of co-writer Aaron Sorkin's involvement.  It may not be known as an Aaron Sorkin project, but it's got Sorkin all over it.  Above all else, Sorkin is always interested in trying to riddle out why something's happened.  That's The West Wing, trying to figure out why politics remained popular despite how divisive they had become and were going to remain long after the TV series ended.  That's The Social Network, trying to figure out how Facebook became so big despite its humbling origins.  That's Jobs, trying to explain the rise of new technology against a backdrop of a classic cult of personality.  That's even Molly's Game, trying to explain gambling being as relevant as ever.  And that's Moneyball, trying to explain how the Great Recession wasn't going to change anything.  The story ends with Beane failing to achieve his goal of leveling the playing field.  Red Sox fans know another big market team used his tactics to succeed, and now everyone uses them, and so small market teams like the A's are right back where they started.  Like any attempt to fix the economy so it works for everyone, apparently.

But you needn't worry about politics or economics to enjoy Moneyball.  Like all great movies, you've got a great cast, one that continually rewards you.  You've got the always-underrated Robin Wright there in another thankless supporting role.  You've got Philip Seymour Hoffman in his classic Patch Adams mode, the mainstream naysayer standing in Beane's way as A's manager.  You've got Jonah Hill reinventing his career as a dramatic actor, inspiring and encouraging Beane to look beyond the standard.  And you've got...Chris Pratt?

In 2011, Pratt was two years into his career-making turn in the sitcom Parks & Recreation, three away from his breakout role in Guardians of the Galaxy.  In Moneyball he plays one of three key small-salary players Beane scoops up to replace superstars.  I can't be sure that this isn't hindsight speaking, but he easily stands out from the pack, acting-wise, and even in a small role stands out in the film, without hamming it up, as he does in Guardians.  (In Parks he was cast in the John Krasinski Office role, and not unsurprisingly both have since taken the classic lovable everyman role to cinematic success.)  Anyway, it's clear he stands out, that he's destined for greater things, and so it's a fun way to experience Pratt before he hit big.  For all I know, Moneyball played a role in helping him get there. 

As a lifelong fan of the A's, I always wanted to see the movie just on that front alone, and I wanted to know whether it acknowledged Beane's legacy with the 2004 Red Sox win in the World Series, and whether or not it referenced the "Greek God of Walks," Kevin Youkilis (items two and three? check and check).  (Of course Beane usurper Theo Epstein, who helped engineer Boston's 2004 curse reversal, did it again with the Cubs after the film was released.)

The film puts a hard focus on some things and a soft one on others.  It glosses over the ace pitching staff the A's had that season, all of whom were later poached (I've long called the A's the farm system of the rest of the league, which made it funny when Beane laments the same thing in the movie) by other teams.  Clearly it has a narrative it wants to tell.  I'm not going to quibble over stuff like that.  As I said, it's really an excuse to let Pitt be Brad Pitt.  I'll take that.  Yeah...