Moneyball (PG-13)
26/01/14 22:08 Filed in: 2011
Starring: Brad Pitt
September 2011
So here we have one of the timeliest movies regarding the current state of our society and economy. Oh, and it just happens to be about baseball. Moneyball chronicles the actual events surrounding a general manager’s brazen decision to eschew the tried-and-true recruiting strategies employed by MLB franchises for over a hundred years in favor of a statistical algorithm developed by an economics graduate from Yale.
Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), indicts his team’s old guard for upholding errant philosophies of recruiting talent—i.e. don’t trade for a player if his girlfriend is ugly because that means he has no confidence. In 2001, the A’s put 39 million dollars worth of talent on the field while the New York Yankees fielded a team worth 114 million. Knowing that his David will never be able to slay the Goliath’s of the league, Beane tells the room of stodgy scouts, “It’s an unfair game…we’ve got to think differently.”
Enter Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and his paradigm shattering notion of buying wins not players. Beane sticks his neck out for Brand and his revolutionary concept, but club manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is resistant to the radical adjustments made to his line up. In the early goings, it appears that Beane will get the axe, but by season’s end something magical happens in the other City by the Bay as statistical probabilities turn into logic-defying reality.
There’s little suspense here for MLB fans who know the results of Beane and Brand’s experiment, but the storytelling is compelling and the performances—across the board—are superb. Also, those normally turned off by “sports” movies just might enjoy Moneyball because it’s more about characters and convictions than memorializing some legendary game from the past. However, Moneyball isn’t completely devoid of competition as it effectively weaves actual game footage along with reenactments by actors into a seamless tapestry that supports the story rather than dominates it. All of this to say, Moneyball is an engaging “true story” drama that just happens to be about sports.
So what does all of this have to do with the current state of our country? Well, maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it seem like we can use some of Beane’s and Brand’s open-minded strategizing on Capitol Hill about now? Clearly the old ways, promulgated by old guard politicians (many of whom are, well…old), just don’t work anymore. I’m not suggesting that we throw the baby out with the bathwater, but there can be no doubt that some new ways of thinking are needed in order to get our economy back on track.
Moneyball exposes, in microcosmic form, the kind of myopic and rigid reasoning that’s lead to stagnation and entropy (not to mention apathy) in that colossal franchise called the USA. So I guess it’s true what they say about baseball imitating life. Heck, for many people, baseball is life!
Rating: 3