'Moneyball' – A Redemption Tale

I confess that I have no particular interest in baseball. Even as I write this, I’m only vaguely aware that there are two teams battling it out in the World Series, and that’s only because my cousins are from St. Louis. I’m not sure who their adversaries are. I went to see “Moneyball” on the strength of the two main actors – Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. I enjoy their work and I heard a positive buzz about the movie.  I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t completely enthralled, either.

On the surface, the storyline is based on a book of the same name, and the experiment of Billy Beane, the general manager for the Oakland A’s. He’s on a budget, he’s frustrated that his star players are leaving, and he’s desperate to try and assemble a winning team. He meets Jonah Hill’s character Peter Brand, an Ivy League Econ major with a love for statistics and probabilities. The two create a winning team based on unlikely statistical certainties – although they never make it to the World Series, they have the longest winning streak in modern history.  Philip Seymour Hoffman offers an amusing characterization of a head coach being pulled kicking and screaming into this new methodology. 

There’s another level to this movie, however, as sometimes hinted at by Brad Pitt’s thoughtful characterization, yet never fully realized. There’s a brief glimpse into Beane’s career as a baseball player. What was the event that ended his career, or, for that matter, his marriage? He doesn’t watch any of the games and he refuses to become personally invested in his players. Why does he make those choices? He’s chasing a demon of some sort, and while I don’t need it spelled out for me on a scoreboard, I’d like a little more development of the main character in order to fully engage in the storyline.

Kerris Dorsey does an admirable turn as Casey Beane, a thoughtful, talented pre-teen who appears to be the moral center in Billy’s life. At the movie’s climax, where Billy is contemplating a move to the Boston Red Sox with a ceiling breaking salary, it’s Casey that gently calls her Dad a “loser” and reminds him of his priorities. 

The audience sees subtle changes in Billy as his team becomes a cohesive unit – he is more personable to the players and he opens up in a few moments of unguarded truth with Peter. Yet more questions are unanswered. I wanted to understand his dissatisfaction with his team’s victories and realize his yearning for something more – even if the realization of that goal was undefined even to him. The screenplay inexplicably stayed between the lines, and kept this movie from really soaring.