Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:30PM Late review: Moneyball
I'm still trying to investigate the circumstances that brought this about, but for some reason, I did not see Moneyball when it was released in theaters last September.
For one thing, blogging about the Detroit Tigers' playoff run and baseball pennant chases, along with following Michigan football, soaked up a lot of time. And I was usually too wiped out, even to go to the movies, when I did have some free time.
But by the time the movie actually came out, I think I was also suffering from Moneyball fatigue.
I love baseball. I love movies. A lot of my online time is spent reading blogs, reviews and features on both subjects. Moneyball crossed between both worlds, so there wasn't really an escape. The movie bloggers and film critics I enjoy wrote about it. All of the baseball scribes and sportswriters I follow chimed in with their recollections of actual events and reviews of the film.
So as much as I wanted to see the movie (and sort of felt I had to, as a baseball blogger), and as much as I wanted to be part of the discussion at the time, I also wanted some distance from it. Maybe I'd go to the theater after the hype had died down a bit.
Unfortunately, I waited too long. But thanks to a second-run theater in Asheville, I was able to see Moneyball just after Christmas. To me, the timing on this felt perfect. Baseball season had been done for two months, so the appetite was there. Seeing it in September might not have made a difference, but it was nice to have a baseball movie when the real thing was in hibernation.
The question with Moneyball was how a book largely about exploiting market inefficiencies to compete with big-revenue baseball teams could be adapted into a cinematic story. But Michael Lewis' book centered on Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane to put a face on the story. Bennett Miller's movie (and the script by Steven Zallian and Aaron Sorkin) take that even further, making this Beane's story almost entirely, following a man fighting the establishment and an industry that's been calcified in conventional thought.
Brad Pitt is well cast as Beane, someone who can make things happen with his charisma and the force of his personality. Yet he also has an edge to him that suggests he's not truly happy with how his job is going and yearns for a breakthrough that will help him gain a foothold in baseball.
baseball, movie reviews, movies 
From his seat outside the Tigers' clubhouse, Konczal takes approximately an hour to rub down 72 baseballs. And when he opens the new box of balls, you see why this job is necessary. The baseballs are too white and shiny, too pristine to be played with. They slip right out of your fingers. They need to be broken in.
He finds that breakthrough in Peter Brand, who opens Beane's eyes to the deeper statistical side of baseball and is thrilled to have someone believe in him enough to put his theories into practice. Jonah Hill does a great job of portraying kind of a shy genius who gains confidence in himself as the story progresses. But what makes his story especially compelling is that Beane shows him that dealing with people is an important side of running a baseball team, as well.
One of the frequent failures of sports movies is that they fail the eye test. Fans who watch the games can tell when an actor's swing looks slow and isn't smooth. When a throw from a quarterback to a receiver doesn't look authentic (and is obviously aided by cuts and camera tricks), it's hard to get past that. Well, at least for me.
Moneyball doesn't have that problem because most of the action (so to speak) takes place off the field. The story follows how Beane and Brand seek out undervalued players based on how much they get on base, how the two build their baseball team out of so-called scrap parts, and how they stick to their convictions in the face of everyone telling you them wrong because they're not doing it the way it's always been done.
When on-field action comes into play, Miller uses actual game footage for most of the play, rather than have his actors try to simulate what actually happened. Which is a smart move. But when the drama needs to be amped up, he closes in on his actors, particularly Chris Pratt, who plays Scott Hatteberg, kind of the embodiment of the Beane-Brand philosophy.
No, Hatteberg didn't have the power and flashy numbers that the departed Jason Giambi took with him to the New York Yankees. But with his talent for taking lots of pitches until he got the one he could hit hard, he could help replace that missing production — and at a far greater value.
Much like Brand as portrayed by Hill, Pratt shows us someone on the player side who worries that he's being asked to do something that he might not be capable of, but finds his footing as the team shows confidence in him. Eventually, it all comes together and the affirmation that comes with that is sweet.
Some have criticized Moneyball for fudging and glossing over some details. For instance, "Peter Brand" is a fictionalized version of Paul DePodesta, who disagreed with his portrayal in the script. (And though he says otherwise, maybe he wasn't too thrilled about a pre-svelte Jonah Hill playing him.)
Additionally, the 2002 A's weren't entirely a rag-tag collection of cast-offs. They had a formidable pitching staff that included Barry Zito, who won 23 games and the American League Cy Young Award. Shortstop Miguel Tejada won the AL Most Valuable Player award after hitting 34 home runs and driving in 131 runs. Other players who made major contributions — such as Eric Chavez, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder — are barely mentioned.
Young first baseman Carlos Pena wasn't traded to the Tigers as easily and for as little as is portrayed in the film. (My moviegoing companion demonstrated great patience in trying to watch the film while I often leaned over and whispered, "It didn't really happen that way.")
Yet the film sells it. The trade looks convincing, mostly because it's the culmination of the conflict between Beane and field manager Art Howe, who steadfastly refuses to indulge an experiment that will presumably cost the team wins and reflect poorly on him.
The same goes for the overall movie. The small details may not be quite correct, but those have little to do with telling this story. And it's a story of affirmation and redemption that anyone — baseball fan or otherwise — will likely find compelling.
One last thing: Moneyball had its own behind-the-scenes drama as Steven Soderbergh was originally set to shoot this movie, only to have Sony shut down production once they discovered that Soderbergh had made changes to the script and intended to make more of a documentary-style film with the real figures portraying themselves.. As a huge Soderbergh fan, part of me will always want to see that movie. Including the footage he shot on the Blu-Ray would've been one hell of a special feature.
I was ready to dislike this movie because the decision was made to go in a more conventional direction (canning one of my favorite directors in the process). But in the end, maybe the right decision was made. And maybe Miller ended up making a better movie, regardless of how closely it stuck to actual events.