It’s sad to take an entire genre of films and pass judgement on it. I will say though that for the most part I’m not a huge fan of sports movies. Obviously there are some great sports movies. Just last year, The Fighter came out and that was a great movie. There’s even occasions, rare ones, but occasions where you’ll find a masterpiece in the sports genre, take for example my favorite sports film, Raging Bull. For the most part though sports films just seem to follow a similar pattern and in that way lack a certain level of thrill or even entertainment. Moneyball may have in some aspects followed similar patterns, but it managed to be a truly awesome movie.

Moneyball is a brilliant film that looks at Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s, and his attempt to make his baseball team a champion regardless of the fact that they have the least money of all other baseball franchises. There are a few details that make Moneyball slightly stereotypical, because the story is told from such a different and interesting perspective and executed so well.

I am not a very avid sports watcher and as a result I did not know this particular story as some of my friends did. Subsequently, there was actually a lot of drama in this movie for me. I had no idea what was going to happen and I was interested through out. And I could care less how historically accurate the movie is because that’s exactly what it is, a movie. The ideas it was establishing dealt with a lot more powerful issues than just baseball and the ideas were expressed due to the plot and brilliant execution of this particular story.

The acting in this film is pristine. Philip Seymour Hoffman is always a positive, this is Jonah Hill’s best performance and you can’t go wrong with Brad Pitt in a leading man role because he’s never given a performance that wasn’t satisfactory. There have been some dull movies, but he’s always played his part. He’s a truly magnificent actor and he’s fantastic in Moneyball.

In the film Moneyball, what you find is a very inspiring and yet honest tale about overcoming even the most relentless obstacles and never forgetting to believe in what’s important. I’ve truly never been as enthralled with another baseball movie than I was with Moneyball. It was written in the unwritten contract of movie reviewing that you have to make some kind of pun when reviewing a sports film so here it goes, Moneyball was a home run.

Grade: A