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Moneyball
- Director: Craig Brewer
- Release Date: Jan 2012
- Run Time: 126
- Genre: Drama, Comedy
Not being a baseball fan, I was afraid watching this movie would be a colossal waste of my time but it turned out that this movie is not just about baseball but one man’s determination to fight injustice, which is a theme all and sundry can relate to.
Moneyball is based on a true story that was captured in Michael Lewis’ book of the same name. The star and hero of the movie is Billy Beane, cleverly played by Brad Pitt. Beane is the General Manager of Oakland Athletics. The team has lost a game to the Yankees, and over and above this, three key players leave the team. This upsets him and motivates him to look for a strategy to form a competitive team but unfortunately, he has a very limited budget. Beane meets a Yale economics graduate, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) who gives him a more than radical theory on sporting real talent and assessing the value of players. Impressed, Bean hires Peter to be his assistant General Manager of the team.
The team meets Peter’s approach with open hostility. Under his base percentage method, he assembles a team of overlooked players and dismissed those with experience that demand for pay far greater than the humble Oakland budget. These overlooked players as per his theory, have the greatest potential to be the best players, and this is greeted with a lot of skeptism. In their first game under this new method, the team does poorly and the method is quickly dismissed as an epic failure. However, Beane’s confidence and faith in this new method remain unraveled and he does not change his strategy, despite the disapproval he faces from within the team, from the public and even from the athletics manager. This proves to be worth in the end, and earns Beane public recognition and respect from the baseball circles.
What inspired me the most about this movie is that it is a story that tells the audience that you may have a dream which no one believes in but if you make a decision not to listen to the critique of others and follow your own heart and intuition, you will reap the rewards. Pitt in his role as Beane takes centre stage, but fortunately the message of the movie is not lost or overshadowed by Pitt.