Granted, this is a sports film and so there are few/no females barely at all in it, although he does have a daughter and an ex-wife (Robin Wright deserves to star in her own film, a whole lot more than the 3 lines she gets here. Gaaaa.) but hey, it's Brad Pitt and it's baseball so there's little violence, no sex or romance at all. It's all about the pseudo intellectual topic of how the Oakland A's (btw, being from San Francisco I'm a Giants girl, so I'm no big fan of the A's to start out with) rebuilt their team with relatively fewer resources than other teams in their league and ended up winning 20 straight games to break a record. Note: we do not get world series games, just regular old, regular season games. The difference being, a young upstart (Jonah Hill) recently of Yale (economics), devises a program that uses statistics in a whole new way to inform scouts and hiring guys who they should hire to get on base. Very significantly, who can get on base, which isn't only achieved by hitting the ball a long distance. Throws everybody's panties into bunches, most especially all the old maid scouts who've been around the game longer than Pitt's character and who think they have all the answers. So, after some disappointments and road blocks, the tide turns, games are won. There's some soul searching on Pitt's part about what to do to follow that up and then we get something very odd for a sports' film: the underplayed end. The A's have not gone to the world series (this story, true story, takes place between about 2002 and 2003) as of the film's end and Pitt's character, Billy Beane remains with the team (as far as we know). Having made an important choice early in his career for money, Beane turns away from the millions he could have made (going to Boston) and as far as we know, sticks around california somewhere, hoping for lightening to strike again.
The reason the film is entertaining and works is the humor and it does not come from Hill (surprisingly). By the time the credits rolled and I saw Aaron Sorkin's name as co-writer, I realized why the film worked so well. It's very tightly, smartly written. The topic could have been very difficult to film. The story does not necessarily turn on the games played, so it's really up to Pitt and the cast behind the scenes of the game to provide the drama and the humor, and they do. It works. And then, doing a little more research, Sorkin's co-writer was Steven Zaillian who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Schindler's List and was nom'd for writing the screenplay for Gangs of New York. Yowza! That's some pretty big company. Would not surprise me at all that come Oscar time Pitt will be up for an Oscar and both writers will be up as well.
Now, please, I'd like to see a biopic focusing on some ingenious woman I've never heard of who changed something major in history. Doesn't even have to be sports. Although Diana Nyad's name has been in the news lately. Swimming with sharks and jellyfish: now there's a dangerous sport.
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