Movie reviews
The first is that the story, which is based on the experiences of real-life Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) during the 2002 season, goes out of its way to debunk the mythology of baseball, while the second is that most of the action takes place away from the baseball diamond, in the offices where hard-nosed negotiating takes place. Strapped for cash and haemorrhaging top players, Beane hires geeky economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), whose number-crunching theory suggests that the so-called experts don’t understand the fundamentals of baseball success. Can the Oakland A’s triumph using Brand’s radical theories?
The answer to that question is less important than the question itself, which underpins what is ostensibly a sports movie with a more universal theme about refusing to accept the status quo, and having the courage of your convictions. Pitt and Hill make for a quirky but very likeable partnership, and they get strong support from Philip Seymour Hoffman as the put-upon baseball coach.
