FILM REVIEW: Moneyball

Part of what makes sport movies so satisfying is the way they externalize a character's internal drama. There's always that moment: when the demons are put to rest and the puzzle pieces slip into place. The batter steps up to the plate, squares his shoulders and .... "WACK" -- cue the fireworks, as the hero rounds the bases.

But Moneyball isn't about the struggles of a player or even a team. Baseball is the background. This is a movie about a visionary who battles conventional wisdom. Moneyball begins with former player-turned-general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) in agony, as his team Oakland A's lose to the Yankees in the playoffs.

Brad Pitt portrays Billy Beane with a self-assured swagger in Moneyball. (Columbia Pictures)

He's alone, listening to the play-by-play in an achingly empty Coliseum. After the traditional trading of clichés with the team's owner, Beane lays it all out on the table: he's losing players and needs more money. The small market A's are like organ donors, raising and training great athletes, only to be pillaged by richer teams.

First priority is replacing the team's departing premiere players, which leads to a hilarious scene of Beane sitting down with his baseball scouts. The table is littered with Dixie cups (for their chewing tobacco) and doughnuts. The old men spit and chew, regurgitating their impressions of available ball players. Perez has "a classy swing." Another likes the way the ball "pops" off his bat. If Beane is Galileo, these old-timers are the Catholic Church: soothsayers of the game with their own inscrutable (but never-questioned) ways of spotting talent.

Beane's saviour is Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young economics wiz from Yale. Numbers are his religion and he believes Major League Baseball is chronically undervaluing promising players. With a flurry of formulas and spreadsheets, Beane and Brand join forces to rebuild the Oakland A's.

The sports talk radio jocks mock them. The scouts quit. Even in the dugout, manager Art How (played by a glowering Philip Seymour Hoffman) doesn't believe in the "moneyball" method. But after a few adjustments on the bench, the hot streak starts.

As we see in flashbacks, Beane was once a promising ballplayer himself. Pitt portrays Beane with an athlete's self-assured swagger, an easy smile and something to chew on never far from reach. The Hollywood A-lister, who coasted on his good looks in the beginning of his career, tackles the role with ease. Bearing shaggy hair, crow's feet and a furrowed brow, he's more like a mid-career Robert Redford than a pretty boy.

But that faded allure adds to the whiff of failure hanging over Beane. Director Bennett Miller increases the feeling of isolation, often framing his characters in looming spaces: a lone man walking across an acre of green, slumped shoulders silhouetted by a concrete arch.

Jonah Hill plays numbers wiz Peter Brand in Moneyball. (Columbia Pictures)

If Moneyball fits into any film genre, it would be the buddy film as Hill's nervous, but eager stats nerd is the perfect sounding board for Pitt's grandstanding. Though it's one of Hill's quietest performances, he nearly steals the film from Pitt (Certainly during a scene centered on a series of mid-season trades). When the final, critical call comes through, Hill scrunches up his face in a fleshy grimace of ecstasy.

Those familiar with the source material may wonder how one makes cinema out of statistics. Well, it helps to start with a screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. There are also, as you might imagine, many images of blinking numbers and formulas dancing across the screen as Moneyball tries to find the sexy in spreadsheets. But fear not: there are actually baseball scenes in the movie, including a wonderful moment when Billy Beane defies his own superstition and returns to the Coliseum to watch the Oakland A's play.

The subtle soundtrack by Canadian composer Mychael Danna thrums in the background as the atmosphere changes. Though up by 11 runs, the Oakland A's still falter. Bennett captures the electricity in the air as the hot streak goes sour, elongating those moments until the crack of a bat echoes through the coliseum.

While baseball aficionados might argue whether the metrics of Moneyball made any difference to the game, the film is about something bigger than simply fielding the right team. In the end, it's a film about obsession and the cost of winning.

RATING: Four-and-a-half Dixie cups out of five.

Brad Pitt, left, and Jonah Hill in a scene from Moneyball. (Columbia Pictures)