Fridae

The American sports film tends to be so predictable that if you've seen one, you've probably seen them all. It's always about an underdog team which triumphs (or at least goes almost all the way) through sheer hard work, perseverance, and a little bit of talent and enterprising spirit – all values celebrated as part of the American spirit.

Yet in Moneyball, there is a gimmick and a twist that make this sports film come across as relatively new.

The gimmick here is the underdog team of misfits, underperformers, and over-the-hill rejects is deliberately chosen and cobbled together by Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt in his best impression of Robert Redford) and his nerdy, obese assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) using advanced statistical analysis, in contravention of the sport's received wisdom and traditional gauges of what makes a valuable player.

The twist in Moneyball is that the dramatic spotlight is on Beane and Brand and their statistical method, rather than the players, the coach, or the game. Instead of focusing on the rise and rise of the underdog team, the film's central conflict is between Beane and Brand on one hand and their talent scouts and coach (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) on the other hand. The battle in this film is not of an underdog and its opponents but between statistics and intuition, innovation and tradition in sports.

The script by Alan Sorkin and Steven Zaillian is snappy and clever. It also succeeds in making the boring field of statistics engaging and consequential. The weakest points of the film are when it seems to distrust itself, resorting to sentimental, humanising character arcs (complete with cute little children!) that arguably detract from the main story.