Moneyball is the best baseball movie since Angels in the Outfield, and the best sports movie since last year's Dolphin Best Picture winner The Fighter. Although if we're talking about team sports it's the best since, you guessed it, the 1994 classic Angels in the Outfield.Neither movie ends with its team winning the World Series. While Angels has (expectedly) more of the Walt Disney happy ending sheen, neither film really projects that either team, the California Angels or the Oakland As, will continually repeat their success and become a dominant force in the league. For each of these teams it was a miracle to make the playoffs, the difference is one team uses angels and the other uses sabermetrics.
After a big playoff run, big teams with deep pockets lure away all of Oakland's star players. With a miniscule budget (relative to other teams' massive budgets) Oakland's general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) attempts an experiment of building a team based entirely on stats (the most, perhaps only, important stat being how much a player gets on base) and seeking cheap players who fit the statistical profile.
It seems like a lot of people said Brad Pitt's performance in The Tree of Life was the best of his career but he does better work here. The entire film is centered around Beane and Pitt hits a nice note of subtlety throughout. It's the naturalism that's the key, of Pitt's performance and Bennett Miller's (Capote) direction of the movie. There are funny scenes sprinkled throughout but not enough to call it a comedy, there's plenty of extential tension but it never approaches melodrama and when the team has success there isn't that "inspiring true story" sentimentalism present in 80% of sports movies.
What I liked most about the movie was that it focused almost entirely on the business of baseball. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't think of another film where the front office and not the players are the stars of the show. It was interesting getting a peek into how player trades go down, what processes scouts use when recruiting players and the interaction between the owner, general manager and dugout manager.
I woulda sent the "relationship with the daughter" subplot down to the minors, but it's given minimal screen time so its not too big of a flaw. When I think about it the film doesn't really have many flaws yet I don't see this winning Best Picture; it's a well-made and well-told story but I don't anticipate it stirring up enough passion to win the big one at the Dolphins. Although sometimes it's the consensus picks that win out, and Moneyball seems like a movie that all the Dolphins could potentially get behind.
Beane says late in the movie that he wants to change the game. And he did, or at the very least influenced it. Though the end of the film is still somewhat tragic, as Colleen pointed out that even if everyone uses sabermetrics those with an advantage (i.e. lots and lots of money) still have it. The players all wear caps perhaps it's time that the salaries wear 'em too.
