To be brutally honest, if there were a film about a hardcore group of people who liked to sit and watch paint dry whilst discussing the diameters of their fridge freezer written by Aaron Sorkin, I would be the first in line to see it.
Sorkin is, in my opinion, the greatest writer we have in the medium of TV and cinema. Everyone should know at least one of his TV shows - Sports Night, The West Wing, and the short-lived Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (incidentally, he returns to TV with a still unnamed show on HBO next year), and his film scripts speak for themselves - A Few Good Men (which was based on a play he wrote), The American President (which was almost a dry run for The West Wing) and the one that won him an Oscar, The Social Network.
So next up is Moneyball, a true story about a baseball General Manager, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) who along with newly hired assistant GM, economics expert Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) formulate a method using statistics and computer analysis to form a winning team.
This meets with a lot of opposition along the way of course, the Oakland A's (the team in question, I should add at this point) scouts want to stick to the tried and tested methods, and the teams manager Art Howe (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) also tries to stand in the way of the new way of doing things.
Moneyball is a fascinating watch, and is only made better with the fantastic script. Co-written with Steven Zaillian (no slouch himself, he wrote Schindler's List, Gangs Of New York and American Gangster), it does seem more like a Zaillian script with a sprinkling of Sorkin, so if you were expecting a scintillating Sorkin script in the vein of The West Wing, or The Social Network, Moneyball isn't quite there.
Which isn't to knock the script, because it is fantastic, and as I write this has already won an award from the New York Critics Circle, which bodes well for Oscar season. Also fantastic is the performance from Brad Pitt, who along with The Tree Of Life (review coming soon), has had a hell of a year. Pitt really gets inside the character, and after 2 hours you really get where Beane was coming from (or not, more on that in a bit.)
Also worthy of mention is Jonah Hill, who I had never actually seen in a straight role. He probably had the most of the comedy moments in the film (this is a script co-written by Aaron Sorkin, there's always going to be brilliantly amusing moments), but he really impressed me. Hopefully he won't be typecast in comedy roles in the future.
I was hoping for a bit more Phillip Seymour Hoffman though, considering how good he was in the last Sorkin-scripted film I saw with him in, Charlie Wilson's War. He didn't really have much to do in the film, but it was an important character so you could see the need for it.
All this talk of the writing shouldn't take anything away from the direction, it's just I'm a Sorkin nut. There is some great direction from Bennett Miller, especially considering this is only his second feature film (Capote, with Seymour Hoffman was his first.)
Of course, the great writing and direction doesn't always work on people. The screening I saw Moneyball in wasn't very busy, but there was still room for a complete idiot. At the end of the film we are left with Beane agonizing over a decision he has to make, and in the pre-credits coda, we find out what that decision was.
Now, we have spent over 2 hours with the character, and thanks to Pitt's superb performance, we know what makes Beane tick, and how he operates, making the decision he has to make quite easy, and obvious. We should all know what he's going to do, and indeed he does.
That didn't sink in for one member of the audience, who after discovering what the choice was, bellowed out "What a dickhead!" Good to see he was able to follow the events of the film. But I know you are all a discerning bunch, just one look at what blog you are reading should prove that!
****
Even if you have no interest or knowledge of baseball, there's still a lot to get out of Moneyball. A fascinating true story, great acting and a brilliant script. Highly recommended.
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