Movie Review: Moneyball

Movie Review: Moneyball (2011)
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Plot: Billy Beane (Pitt) is a baseball coach with dreams of making it to the world series. However, he always seems to fall short – and he keeps losing his top players to the larger teams, which have bigger budgets. Billy needs a plan that goes away from the norm. He needs something different.

Enter Peter Brand (Hill), a statistics nerd who looks at the game in a unique way. His approach to sports is to look at the number of times a player gets on base, which increases their ability to score points. This radical thinking catches Billy’s eye, and he starts putting together a team of under-dogs that follow this statistical model. Can this team of rag-tag players possibly win the world series, much less a single game?

For a sports movie about math and statistics, there’s a distinct lack of both in this movie. That isn’t to say it’s bad – it’s just not what you expect to see at all. Pitt’s performance is on par with his other roles, clearly trying to get an early nod for an Oscar.

Hill is surprisingly not annoying as hell in this movie, but still comes off as the awkward fat guy.

Overall I don’t mind having seen the movie, but could have missed it. The ending fizzles out, not quite sure how to stop the story that has been building steam to a climax that fails to deliver. But that’s where the emotional component that would involve the Oscar committee comes in.

Pitt’s character clearly goes on a journey throughout the flick, but there are a lot of parts where they elude to him being unlucky if he attends a game that never really gets fleshed out.

Moneyball is worth a watch, but don’t expect much in the way of sports or math. Mostly expect to see Pitt play a badass baseball manager and Hill play a nerd lacking self confidence.

So basically, more of what these two actors have done before.