"We are card counters at the blackjack table. We're gonna turn the odds on the casino."
That is perhaps the closest that Bennett Miller's new film gets to the snappy and rapid-fire intensity of "The Social Network", another film written by Aaron Sorkin. Although "Moneyball" has had the imprint of a cacophony of other writers, it bares the strongest mark of the recent awards winner. This is a far degree from that previous writing venture, but don't expect me to spend all my time griping that it's not as good as "The Social Network". These two are vastly different films that share that similar feeling. There are plenty of things that this film has in its favor.
"Moneyball" isn't a film I was really too eager to see, so the response I had to it was somewhat positive for my expectations. It's set on the backdrop of the world of baseball, but it's oddly enough not really about baseball. It deals more with what the sport, at its best, represents. Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, a former baseball player whose luck didn't pan out, and now he's general manager of the ill-budgeted Oakland Athletics. He's the odd man out at the discussion table, with scouts of the old generation of baseball throwing around superficial nitpickery about players. "He has an ugly girlfriend. Ugly girlfriend means no confidence", states one geezer superficially.
