Moneyball movie review & film summary (2011)

Faced with rebuilding the team at bargain basement prices, Beane became persuaded by the theories of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a nerdy recent Yale graduate who crunched numbers to arrive at a strict cost-benefit analysis of baseball players.

He persuaded Beane that he should hire based on key performance statistics that pointed to undervalued players. Together, they assembled a team that seemed foolhardy at first, but during the course of an agonizing season, proved itself the biggest bargain in baseball.

"Peter Brand" is based on people described in the 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Jonah Hill's performance is understated and fascinating; a pudgy kid who has never played a baseball game in his life, Peter has analyzed decades of baseball stats to prove that game-winning qualities are not always the ones veteran scouts look for. He's shy and quiet, advancing his theories tentatively but with firm certainty; he's an amusing contrast with the team's grizzled, tobacco-chewing scouts — who are looking for all the wrong things, Brand argues.

Pitt's Billy Beane is an inward and lonely man, recovering from a failed marriage and doting on his daughter, Casey (Kerris Dorsey). He's so driven, he can't bear to watch a game in the stadium, and sometimes drives aimlessly while listening to it on the radio. He's fully aware that if he follows his theories for the full season and they fail, that will make him unemployable. He faces fierce opposition from his bullet-headed team manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who feels his experience is being insulted by a manager mesmerized by some half-baked Ivy League theorist.

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