Going beyond Brad’s good looks

Gary Johnson.
Director: Michael Lewis
Cinema: Eastgate
Running time: 128 minutes
Type of film: Drama/Sport
Reviewed by Prof Joel White
Approaching 50 years of age, and with all those kids not to mention that wife — it’s entirely appropriate that our Brad should take on a serious role; one that requires more than good looks.
And as the general manager of a professional American baseball team in the film Moneyball, we get the full treatment: silent, pensive looks and gestures, unexpected and unprovoked bursts of angry rebuttal, a physical body that would be the envy of a man half his age.
In short, we get Brad Pitt, as his public relations handler would like us to see him. And all this from your Herald movie reviewer never an all out BP fan.
But and this must be laid out clearly on the table a film which is (beginning, middle and end) about the game of American professional baseball can no more expect to find a following in Zimbabwe any more than a film about cricket would attract or appeal to an American audience.
The year is 2002.
The Oakland Athletics not doing very well in recent years has a new general manager.
This is the position for the man who oversees the buying, trading and releasing of talent; one who naturally comes into conflict with the bench manager, who runs the team as they take the field, deciding who plays each day.
The Athletics are a team in the American League.
There are eight teams in that league; as there are eight teams in the National League.
During the season each team plays 154 games solely against teams in their league. The pennant is to the team in each league, which has the best win loss average during the season.
The World Series is the best of seven games played between the winners of the American League versus the winners of the National League.
For serious baseball fans the film must have had, in America, a special appeal, in that Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the general manager, comes to the position after a career as a leading player.
He brings with him the unorthodox ideas, he has been unable to put into practice during those years.
Among other successes those ideas bring his team a record breaking winning streak of 20 consecutive games.
Incidentally and only incidentally we see Brad Pitt, the father, practising his real life role, as the father of a 12-year-old guitar-playing daughter.