Movie review: Moneyball ****

Stars: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: Bennett Miller
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Neptune Cinema week of Friday, October 14. For more information call 292-7296.
Tickets: Buy tickets online
Runtime: 133 minutes
Drama/sports

Moneyball is a thinking person's baseball movie, and a baseball fan's thinking movie.

It's based on the Michael Lewis book about Billy Beane, the ex-ballplayer turned Oakland A's general manager who upended the game by rebuilding his team through cold-hearted statistical analysis called "sabermetrics."

Moneyball takes a dry story about numbers and no-name ballplayers and turns it into something funny, deep and illuminating.

As Beane, Brad Pitt gives perhaps his smartest, subtlest performance ever. His Beane is a man at war with himself. He's as superstitious as any baseball fan - he won't watch his Oakland A's play, even when a trip to the World Series is on the line. He may show a little of Brad Pitt's swagger when he's making a trade or imposing his will on the manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) or the team.

But in flashbacks, we see the Beane who once was a promising prospect who spent years trying to break into the big leagues. The older, wiser Beane knows, better than the crusty, contemptuous coots who are his team's scouting corps, that "confidence" is one thing all their hunches, gut feelings and stats-quoting can't measure. And confidence, which did Beane's playing career in, just may be what is still holding him back.

But when Billy stumbles into a doughy young Yale economics grad named Peter (Jonah Hill), he's ready to start a revolution. It's not about batting average, it's about getting on base. It's not about defense, it's about runs.

I don't know if director Bennett Miller (Capote) is much of a baseball fan, but this feels like a curious outsider's view of the game and this "system" that exploded 100 years of accepted wisdom. And that's a great thing. The movie dwells on few players (most were no-names, an "island of misfit toys" they're called) but instead hangs with Beane as he and Peter struggle with rebellious scouts, a cheap owner, contemptuous peers, a defiant manager (Hoffman brings a glorious contained rage to Art Howe) and players.

It's a triumph of tone and much of this spins off of Pitt, who plays a caring but absent dad, a distant boss who has to be ruthless and a thin-skinned ex-jock who is buried under a mountain of criticism when things go wrong. As they will.

I love the baseball stuff in this multi-writer script, but also the "Art of War"-style maneuvering that Pitt's Beane becomes known for, the pithy wisecracks that sum up how one plays the general manager's game.

Pitt makes this guy flawed, uncertain, temperamental and impulsive. His is a performance that makes this an inside baseball movie that even non-fans can understand and enjoy. And he plays this confidence-starved gambler with a verve that Oscar voters are almost sure to reward, sometime after the dust has settled on another baseball season.

Next attraction: Courageous