Moneyball: High Intensity Baseball With Brad Pitt

Hollywood's top leading man has no love interest in his new film -- not unless you count baseball, that is.

Yes, there is no ravishing young thing to detract Brad Pitt in Moneyball, the story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's tortured attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.

Statistics. Computers. Baseball. No boy/girl romance. How's that for sex appeal? Huh?

The show is pretty much all baseball all the time.

And I went to see this flick even though I'm not a sports fan and I often find baseball incredibly boring.

On top of all that, at two hours and 13 minutes the film is about 20 to 30 minutes too long.

And yet I loved it. Yes -- loved it.

Because this is not your typical sports movie. And the intensity is mesmerizing.

Tio begin with Brad Pitt delivers a mature, nuanced, wonderfully retrained, Oscar-worthy performance. He's not only the handsomest guy in Hollywood and the closest thing we have these days to a great movie star in the tradition of Clark Gable and Cary Grant but Brad Pitt is also a superb actor. And he positively shines in this movie.

Pitt is on the screen nearly every minute and with simply a glance or a look or a turn he holds your attention and draws you inside the character as few other actors can.

Plus, Brad receives great support from Jonah Hill as a nerdy, Yale-educated statistician and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the A's crusty, overweight manager.

The screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin delivers some of the best lines you'll find on the screen this season. The writing is superb and director Bennett Miller has brought it all home with a raw integrity (overlaying actual video footage from real events into the story) that makes it all seem remarkably fresh and alive.

Of course it's no accident that the film has debuted as we begin the baseball playoffs. The timing is perfect.

But here's the thing: the film doesn't need that and it doesn't need any help from major league baseball or any other organization or anyone else.

It stands on its own as a fine, honest, well-made American film.

At it's core the story is about a man struggling to remain true to his dreams, to his principles, to himself.

And the driving force here is Brad Pitt.

Bottom line: It is possible to make a successful American film without gratuitous sex, violence, gutteral language, a preposterous story and/or superheroes.

Bravo!