Capote director Bennett Miller helms this semi-nonfictional adaptation of Michael Lewis' 2003 book of the same name, written for the screen by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List). Right off the bat, this doesn't sound like a very sportsy movie, which is fine with me, because Moneyball is not as much about baseball as it is about freeing oneself from traditional values in order to achieve goals more effectively. Lewis' book is supposedly the Freakonomics of baseball (and if you haven't yet read Freakonomics and its sequel, Superfreakonomics, you're wasting your life one day at a time). How often have we done things a certain way simply because that's the way they've always been done? Or because their merits seem self-evident?Welcome to the world of Moneyball, where the highlight reel is meaningless, and bottom-line runs per game is the real glory. Traditional sports heroes are replaced by undervalued, purely utilitarian players.
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