Moneyball

It’s a movie for baseball fans. It’s a movie for Brad Pitt fans. It’s even a movie for math geeks obsessed with statistics. From a marketing perspective, Moneyball is all of these things, but to its credit, it can’t be categorized so easily.

This big-screen adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis that dissected the improbable success of the 2002 Oakland Athletics is a crowd-pleasing character study about redemption and the art of risk-taking.

It tells the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), who flopped as a big-league player but became successful as the Athletics general manager. After a playoff season in 2001, however, his top three players left in free agency, signing lucrative contracts with big-market teams.

Faced with another rebuilding project, the frustrated Beane decides to defy conventional thinking and hire Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a recent Yale graduate with some unique ideas about putting together a competitive team on a modest budget. Rather than replace stars with stars, he encourages Beane to sign players with specific skill sets who complement each other — an “island of misfit toys,” as Brand calls them.

So the pair ignores the team’s scouting department and signs a series of aging castoffs who have been overlooked and will sign for cheap. The risky strategy confounds sportscasters and irritates field manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who must find a way to win with distinctly non-traditional talent.

The Athletics that season provided a great underdog story, and while Moneyball has the ragtag roster common in such movies, it doesn’t include the climactic motivational speech or big-game finale.

That’s because it’s not really a baseball film. The in-game action is used only sparingly, and most of the drama occurs in the clubhouse, rather than between the lines.

Moneyball is more of a character piece that allows Pitt to excel with a perceptive performance that captures Beane’s inner turmoil and his determination to succeed that turns both cold-hearted and cavalier.

Regardless of how the season turned out (no spoilers here for non-baseball fans), Beane and his methods accomplished something almost impossible. He changed the thinking of front-office personnel everywhere in a sport that is rooted in tradition like no other.

The script by the acclaimed duo of Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) features some crackling dialogue and gives viewers a glimpse into a side of baseball they rarely see, even if they treat Beane with a bit too much reverence.

Meanwhile, director Bennett Miller (Capote) wisely avoids the temptation to spin Beane’s true-life story into a series of Hollywood clichés. He takes mundane elements of sports, such as player transactions and scouting meetings, and gives them almost as much suspense as the game itself.

Like Beane, Moneyball has the audacity to defy convention and becomes a winner as a result.

Rated PG-13, 133 minutes.