Moneyball has all the sports-movie ingredients: an underdog team; a manager haunted by past failures; talented but overlooked players; an amazing true-story comeback. Yet despite all this, Moneyball is not conventionally triumphalist. It’s a rather melancholy clash between human convictions and cold computer analysis.
Yes, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and his economics-grad assistant, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill as the real-life Paul DePodesta, who objected to being portrayed as a nerd and requested his name not be used) found success with an unlikely 2002 team drafted using in-game statistics. But what have they really ushered in? Richer teams using the Athletics’ methods against them? Even more ruthless ways to trade players and managers as commodities?
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian’s deft screenplay eschews game-day spectacle to emphasise baseball’s human interactions. Torrents of unspoken meaning roar beneath Beane’s amiable patter with players, rival managers and colleagues (including a sullen, under-used Philip Seymour Hoffman as the A’s field manager). Pitt’s subtle, internally focused performance suggests some people’s actions can’t ever really be quantified. Meanwhile, Hill brings his usual diffident sweetness to Brand’s own discovery that his numbers-driven world is more idealistic than the baseball industry’s zero-sum game.
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