Moneyball (2011) Movie Review

Bennett Miller (Capote) directs this Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network and A Few Good Men)  screenplay based on the novel "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game". Brad Pitt (Inglourious Basterds and Se7en) stars as the team manager of the Oakland A's. He seeks to find a way for his team to compete with the other teams in the league on a much lower budget. Jonah Hill (Superbad and Cyrus) is a young Yale graduate who applies economics to the drafting process of Major League baseball players.

I was lucky enough to attend an advanced screening of "Moneyball" just days after it's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Going into the film I was especially interested to see how Aaron Sorkin would follow up writing 2010's "The Social Network."  For me the dialogue  (and Trent Reznor's score) were the most impressive elements of "The Social Network" so the writing in "Moneyball" had a lot to live up to. I felt that it easily competed with his previous work without feeling like a rehash of style or format. There's a scene in the movie in which Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill's characters are in an office juggling multiple ball player trades on three different telephones for about five minutes of screen time. This scene in someone else's hands may have come across as dull or boring but with Sorkin's writing it feels so  interesting and so alive that it stands out as one of the best scenes in the movie. The film has an overall great cast, but I was most pleased to see how well Jonah Hill performed in a dramatic role. Hill was on the acting path of being a one note comedy actor but between this and his upcoming role in the "21 Jump Street" reboot, he has breathed a breath of fresh air into his shtick, and I for one am happy to see it.

If you enjoy true story dramas, good acting, and great writing, then this is a movie for you. If you don't like baseball or find the subject matter boring in general, then I still suggest you give it a try. With great writers any subject can be interesting, besides I hate baseball.

Rating: 8.2/10