Every now and again, a movie comes along that transcends its potential: A movie that takes a decent, or even mundane, premise and turns it into something far more substantial. Moneyball is such a film. With a good, albeit limited storyline, the makers of this pseudo sports film rise above the confines of this true-life tale to produce a motion picture well above the standard of other such films in the genre. Intelligently written, shrewdly directed, and skillfully acted, Moneyball is easily as entertaining as the best of the baseball games it’s based around.

Moneyball primarily takes place over the 2002 US Professional Baseball season. Following an opening round loss in the 2001 Seasonal Playoffs to the substantially better funded New York Yankee’s, the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), struggles to rebuild his team with the limited budget he is encumbered with. Thankfully, young Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) has a radical, fiercely criticized new means of selecting players that, if successful, could provide Billy a winning team within the limitations of his finances. A strategy Billy is determined to see put into action, even if it means ruffling a few feathers, and reshaping the face of professional baseball in the process.

Moneyball is far from your traditional baseball movie. In fact, the game itself receives such limited screen time that it’s occasionally easy to forget you’re even watching a sports movie. Which is hardly surprising given the script comes from the minds of Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York / Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network / TV’s The West Wing), who choose to set many of the quick witted scenes around the fragile and dejected characters of the Oakland A’s support team.

Front and centre of these characters is Brad Pitt’s, Billy Beane, a former Baseball superstar who was predicted by many talent scout’s to be the best all-round player the game has ever seen. But Billy’s ‘star status’ never seems to correlate with his performance, leading Billy to a behind the scenes role as General Manager of the Oakland A’s. Brad Pitt’s composed performance as the dejected, but level headed Billy is perhaps his best performance to date. Matched only by Jonah Hill’s surprisingly subdued performance as statistics analyst Peter Brand in a role far removed from Mr. Hill’s traditional headache inducing comedic hijinks. But it’s a welcome change that the young actor astutely rises to.

Then there is the restrained direction by director Bennett Miller (Capote) who frames many scenes in close confines – small office spaces, cars etc. – to ensure the focus of the film stays with the talented cast and the witty script. This is one director who knows exactly where the talent in his film lies. And Bennett highlights these perfectly.

In fact, there is so much perfection in Moneyball that it becomes somewhat disappointing when the film reaches its final stages and the story struggles to find an appropriate close. But, perhaps rather unfortunately, this is not so much the fault of the producers of the film as it is the limitations of the true-life story it’s based on. And when all is said and done, fifteen minutes of rather erratic, and slightly overdrawn narrative at the end of a film is a small price to play to ensure the integrity of the story, and the perfection that is the 110 minutes prior. And with that consideration in place, Moneyball is nothing short of a home run.