Brad Pitt dominates this solidly crafted if over-reverent and often confusing study of inequality in professional baseball.
The idea (based on a true story) is glorious. The general manager of a small-town team, Billy Beane (Pitt), realises he needs to out-think his rich rivals, so he gets into recycling. He analyses the statistics, buys up players no one else wants (whether because they're injured, ageing, addicted to weed or just "freakish in the wrong way") and puts them to better use. What a timely message: that it's not just nice but efficient to give people a second chance.
Pitt is mesmerising as the furniture-kicking Beane, intellectually frustrated and blithely bitter, determined to use his pretty-jock charisma to make real waves. Jonah Hill is equally gripping as Peter Brand, the nerd who helps Billy's dream (sort of) come true. But we get too much back story on Billy (adorable daughter, yuppie ex-wife, crushed boyhood dreams) and next to nothing on Brand. "Who are you?" asks Billy several times. The movie doesn't care.
Moneyball attacks the kind of cult of celebrity that surrounds sports stars, thus forcing up salaries and placing enormous pressure on a few youngsters who are deemed to be "the full package". But isn't Pitt the Hollywood equivalent? Would this film have got the green light from Sony with an unknown, less photogenic actor in the lead?
The anonymous soundtrack - stadium-rock twiddling - adds to our suspicion that Moneyball's "anti-corporate" stance may be skin-deep. And the humour's too intermittent to distract us. Eight of the jokes are an absolute joy (yes, I was counting). And, because they're delivered at 70mph and mock abuses of power, one presumes they come courtesy of Aaron "The Social Network" Sorkin (one of two screenwriters listed). But when it comes to Sorkin's jokes, less is less.
What we're left with is a sporadically entertaining mess. Moneyball is unsure about what (if any) risks it should take. It means well but, in the final analysis, it doesn't mean much.
Moneyball
Cert: 12A
