udarmohit

t has long been said that professional sports are more a game of politics than an actual game. Major League Baseball is not just a game of money, but in "Moneyball" it's a game of numbers versus a game of people. It's callousness at its highest when general managers trade away people as if they're objects with little regard for them or their family. Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland As, seems to take that even further, treating people as if they are only numbers, and yet there was something refreshing and humanistic about the whole thing.

It's 2001 and Oakland has just lost to the New York Yankees in the playoffs, not surprising, seeing as their payroll was 76 Million dollars less. The humour of "Moneyball" starts in the off-season when the team can't afford to keep their top players and Beane and his experienced scouts start tossing around some free agent ideas. One guy is no good because he frequents strip clubs too often, another guy is no good because his girlfriend is ugly, and on down the list they go. But then Beane meets Yale-educated, economics-, mathematics-, and computer-whiz, baseball fan, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). He has no experience and he doesn't know these players. He doesn't know if they stand funny or if they swing ugly. He only knows their stats and their salary.

With the multiple narrative threads dealing at a microscopic emotional level - trying hard to come to terms with a cheating spouse where you know you've drawn the shortest possible end of the stick given the state of the other half, and having a teenage daughter who doesn't quite understand you, they provide that grounding to make it easy to identify with Matt King the man who's really quite down on his luck on family matters. The plot threads expand to his near obsession to want to discover with whom his wife has been cheating with, and to bear the brunt of an incessantly sarcastic father-in-law who doesn't take her daughter's comatose state all too kindly.

But it's not all doom, gloom and filled with negative emotions here, as the film does have its fair share of lighter moments courtesy of characters like Alexandra's insensitive loud mouthed friend Sid (Nick Krause) who comes along for the road trip of sorts, though almost always punctuated with that tinge of inevitable sadness in the air. Moments of poetic justice also makes you want to whoop for joy, although you tend to weigh in on these moments and make you think - would you want to maximize benefits for those in your family, or for selfish reasons choose not to remotely reward someone who had done you a great wrong. Such is the tussle and wrangle Matt has to deal with, and makes The Descendants one really topsy- turvy emotional ride, which on one hand one wants to appear magnanimous, while on the other having to suppress the urge to just punch out.

And Clooney deserves his award for making Matt King so believable, junking his glamorous self for something far more affable at first, before the problems start to pile, each with a deadline of its own, and wondering when he would crack under undue pressure, emotionally and physically. Sharing perfect daughter-father relationship chemistry with Clooney is Shailene Woodley who in my opinion is an up and coming young actress to look out for, showcasing a wide range of emotions here, and a scene which I thought brought out her best when her character got broken the news of her mom's condition.

Patrick Dempsey plays Tripp Kennedy, a savant with a liking for small change. A still hot Ashley Judd plays Kaitlin, a bank teller. But not all is as it seems and as the story progresses the action heats up, the story, and the film, begins to fall apart.

Once the thought "Monk" entered my head I couldn't get rid of it, like one of those annoying songs you get stuck on your internal jukebox. There were couple of laugh out loud moments but those were few and far between and the movie seemed to drag on and on and the holes in the plot got bigger and the script was stretched to cover the holes, mostly with lots of pointless swearing.

Pointless in two respects. Rob Minkoff is no Quentin Tarantino and all the cast added together will never be Samuel L Jackson. The storyline was so vague at times, so off plot, that I got the impression the someone on set shouted "MORE SWEARING" to cover up the rubbish dialogue and acting in pointless scenes which should have been sent to the floor of the edit suite, metaphorically speaking.