On the Money

The morning of the Oscars, I got to watch my third of the nine nominated films, Moneyball. It became my favorite of the three nominees I've seen.

Moneyball is the dramatized story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's who, in 2002, championed the use of sabermetrics in baseball as a way of assembling a winning team on a fraction of the budget given to MLB titan teams. The film had a somewhat troubled birth. It fell through almost entirely once, then had a second script all set to go, written by Steven Zaillian and directed by Steven Soderbergh. When the studio balked at the last minute at that approach's half documentary style, in came eventual director Bennett Miller.

It was also at that point that Aaron Sorkin came in to craft version three of the screenplay, and because of him that I had any interest in seeing the movie. Baseball barely holds my interest, but Sorkin has a proven track record at making compelling narratives by heightening real situations. He's done it before specifically in the field of sports with his brilliant-but-cancelled series Sports Night, and done it with a true story last year in The Social Network. I was eager to see what resulted here.

The finished screenplay carries the credits of both Sorkin and the writer before him, indicating the strong hand of both in the finished product. And yet, Sorkin's mark is all over the result, and all for the good. The patter of the movie is fast and clever. It simplifies that statistics aspects perhaps a bit too much, though I think anyone truly interested in that could go read the book on which all this is based; the right thing for strong drama is to focus on the character arcs here.

Brad Pitt is the perfect anchor for this film. His performance is engaging and natural. You immediately root for him, as you should in any "sports underdog" movie. Jonah Hill is also strong; you can see why he got swept up in the Oscar current and was nominated for this film (though perhaps at the same time, you could also imagine other actors who could have filled the role just as well). There are also appearances by many recognizable working actors in the business, and a great (though not meaty) supporting turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Though I never quite got caught up in any emotion by this film, my mind was engaged throughout... and after. I found myself wanting to do more background reading on this story after the movie was over (possibly including the original book). And all this despite a lack of interest in baseball. I think that right there should tell you the movie was doing something right.

I rate it an A-. It makes it onto my top 10 of 2011 list in the #7 slot, still rather far from my favorite, but the best of the actual Oscar contenders I've seen so far.