Written by Aaron Sorkin, moneyball is a sports drama that’s worth your time even if you don’t care about baseball or in a sports journey.
The film follows Billy Beane the manager of Oakland Athletics who leads his team to unprecedented success via some unorthodox means.
Realizing that his team doesn’t have the finances to compete with the Yankees or the red sox, Billy with the help of Peter Brand his assistant uses statistics to build a potential championship winning side.
Their methods emphasize the use efficient players over star studded million dollar players who may or may not succeed. The ignored , overlooked, underplayed, missed out , discarded players whom the baseball world seems to have no use for.
But Billy and Peter come up with stats and maths to find out certain attributes in them which no one can even notice, thus over time gathering and building a squad full of unorthodox and despised professionals that with time develop a into more than useful players. It’s the ultimate underdog team.
This film showcases the rise of the use of sports science, which is widely used and considered a crucial aspect of every sport today.
But this time Billy Beane makes it work like no one else ever could , his team reaches big heights and breaks unprecedented records, thus popularizing their “Moneyball” philosophy which later on the Red Sox of Boston would go onto use and would spread to other territories like English Football predominantly in Liverpool FC.
The performances are great, Brad Pitt gives one of his best performances of his career and Jonah Hill is brilliant as his assistant Peter.
Philip Seymour Hoffman does a good job with the small role he has plus the daughter of Billy Beane is a heartwarming presence.
The filmaking is the real hero here, with a screenplay that never loses any focus on it’s characters, the seamless editing that helps you reach the critical points coupled with a great score that just makes the entire experience a memorable one.
The film reaches emotional heights along with the tense sports moments, Billy’s determination and strive for success due to his failure in the same sport as a player drives him forward and forms one of the core aspect of the film. His eventual success and dissapointment, the end lesson he gets from Peter, his emotional and heart warming relation with his daughter carries this film through, buoyed by brilliant direction from Bennett Miller with Sorkin and Zallian’s screenplay, the film is a great accomplishment and a great reminder of the work that goes on behind the camera regardless of the budget and scale of the film.
