Moneyball
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Rated: PG-13
Running time: 133 minutes
Baseball is a stat freak's dream. While some enjoy the game for the action, there are those who simply love the numbers of it all. Personally I'm a big fan of the elaborate hand signals. This baseball movie decides to take a snapshot of a historic moment in baseball when the stats geeks showed the old boys that the game had changed.
Direct from Michael Lewis's book, Moneyball, this is the tale of Billy Beane, general manager for Oakland A's, with a problem. He's lost all his star players to rich teams with three times his budget. Brad Pitt is Billy, a player-turned-GM who brings in Yale economics major Peter Band, played by Jonah Hill. Together they "do the math" to figure out how to replace one very expensive player with three less expensive ones looking purely at numbers.
Sounds reasonable, yes, but this is a new system and new is not always appreciated by people who have been around forever. There is resistance from the old boys' club, as is to be expected anytime people are scared to lose their jobs to change. Not to give anything away, but experience dictates that those who embrace change as an opportunity usually come out ahead.
The acting and directing is pretty tight and it was especially nice to see Jonah Hill not swearing and yelling all the time. If you've seen the commercials and think you'll like it - you will. I say this only because at the end of the film people actually clapped, and that is very rare.
