This review was requested by Don Rebel. Many thanks to Don for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.
Director: Bennett Miller
Writers: Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt, Stephen Bishop, Reed Diamond, Brent Jennings
Runtime: 133 mins.
2011
It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.
-Mickey Mantle
Moneyball is not the best baseball movie out there, but it may be the most interesting. That's because it's not about a player, a team, an important game, a magical season, or a comeback victory-- though it contains those elements. Moneyball is about an idea.
The film follows the true story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), General Manager of the Oakland A's, and picks up in the final hour of their 2001 season. Against all odds the A's have made it to the American League Divisional Series against the New York Yankees in a classic story of David vs. Goliath. Only, Goliath wins. We learn in short order that the magical season the A's cobbled together with luck, skill, and spunk, is not destined to be repeated. All of their rising stars (Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, Jason Isringhausen) will be unceremoniously snatched up by teams that can afford their rising star paychecks. In the midst of this prologue's suffocating sense of deflation and disappointment, we see the all-important insert card:
$114,457,768 vs. $39,722,689
These are the budgets of the respective teams, and their prominence in the prologue signals to us the themes that the film will insist upon over and over again: it all comes down to money, and baseball is an unfair game.
