Moneyball 2011
There are a lot of movies about baseball, but they usually concentrate on the players and the game itself. Moneyball focuses on the front office, where salaries are negotiated and players are hired or fired. Faced with a very restrictive budget, the general manager (played by Brad Pitt) is forced to let go of the big names that brought the team success in the previous year. He brings in an ivy league economics major (Jonah Hill, playing it straight and getting an Oscar nomination for his trouble) to figure out a new way of evaluating talent. Meanwhile, the general manager has plenty of his own problems to figure out, along with the turmoil of tearing up a team and rebuilding it against the wishes of his crusty old manager, played incredibly well by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
This isn’t a typical movie. The plot is more about how to run a business than anything, which had to be hard to dramatize. It reminded me more than a little of The Social Network in the way it explores a subject with a documentary feel, though with a lot of fictionalized stuff to keep it interesting. It doesn’t move particularly quickly, but is still rewarding. The way the movie ends really hits the ball out of the park, wrapping everything up nicely.
It is kind of slow, but I will go ahead and give this an A.
Written: 12 Feb 2012
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital