Film Review | Moneyball

If you thought that selling a film about baseball to European audiences was tough - try a film about baseball statistics.

Just as he was made into a (reluctant?) poster-boy to reel in crowds to Terrence Malick's lumbering arthouse epic The Tree of Life, Brad Pitt is once again brought on board to seduce punters into this slow-but-inspiring, based-on-a-true-story account of a thwarted man's journey to restore his dignity through the redemptive power of... sports statistics.

Pitt plays the real-life character Billy Beane (that he's referred to as 'Mr Beane' on more than one occasion is yet another reminder of the film's limited cross-national appeal); a former Major League Baseball player (thank you, post-blackout Wikipedia) who, in his latter-day post as general manager of the Oakland Athletics - an ailing team since the 90s - teams up with a Yale economics whiz-kid Peter Brand (a composite of the real-life Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill) to try and nudge the team out of their rut.

Brand proposes a cutting-edge strategy for player recruitment. Instead of going by a player's history on the field and physical ability, the two endeavour to poach players purely based on their statistical scores - some of which do not reflect instantly winning results.

This esoteric approach causes strain amongst Billy's colleagues, and the 40-something former player (plucked out of college at 18 and drummed up as a prodigy, before rapidly fading into obscurity) is cornered into some tough decisions that could make or break his career.  

Beane is a divorcee - sporadic meetings with his young, musically-talented daughter (Kerris Dorsey) provide some emotional respite - and we're made aware that he's lived the latter part of his life in quiet suffering after being made a redundant baseball player. This is the most emotionally involving aspect of the film, and it makes the statistics plotline bearable to wade through. Pitt plays Beane quiet and straight... however I couldn't help but feel that the superstar actor, in suppressing his superstardom, instead went for a series of reliable tics that made this role indistinguishable from most of his previous characters.

He goes for occasional moody stares, and makes pauses in all the right places... watch it - you'll probably get what I mean. Director Bennett Miller (of Capote fame - its star Philip Seymour Hoffmann appears as the team's manager, Art Howe) is to be commended for keeping the pace languid and the trimmings simple - there are no gimmicks apart from a (gradually unravelling) story of triumph against the odds.

But if you're not into baseball, it remains a hard sell regardless. Remember that pivotal scene in Casino Royale, where James Bond's more conventional espionage skills take a backburner to a game of poker against his nemesis that would determine his fate? If you don't know the rules of poker, what's supposed to be suspense just turns into bored frustration.

Well, picture that throughout the course of an entire film, and you have Moneyball. American critics have praised the film to no end, but there remains a sneaking suspicion, as the two-hour-plus film glides past your eyes - largely in muted greys and whites, as it takes us through either locker rooms or offices - that there is something about it that will remain opaque to us baseball-ignorant Europeans.

Really, it's a shame that the film arrives to us already decorated with rave reviews and award nominations. In an ideal world it would simply be experienced as something of a remarkable curiosity.

The little film about sports statistics that could.