I thought this movie was pretty good. It wasn’t as all-encompassing as Michael Lewis’ book but it found a way to cut out some details and still tell the story the right way. It started pretty slow but picked up from there. Once Jonah Hill got onboard, and they started playing games, it got interesting. The best scene had to be when Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) was trying to trade for Ricardo Rincon and was calling Shapiro, Sabean and Dombrowski (other GMs) and negotiating like a champ. It was the coolest.
Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) was a real dick. He was the old-timey manager of the A’s that played the part of MLB purists trying to keep math and science out of baseball. When Oakland went on their 20 game win streak, Howe was the one receiving the credit. No one wanted to believe that Beane’s methods were working.
What the movie (or book for that matter) never mentions is just how great the A’s pitching staff was that year. The whole story revolves around batters but the triumvirate of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder was (at the time) looked on just as highly as the famous Braves’ trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. Hollywood is supposed to ignore these things to make a “better” film but this is definitely a fault I find with the book.
4 out of 5
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