The Damned United / Moneyball

I was thinking of The Damned United when watching a preview screening of Moneyball the other day. Both follow a similar theme and both are based on a true-life character.
The Damned United is a biopic of soccer coach Brian Clough, played by Michael Sheen, during the 1960s/70s. He was the coach of a third tier team in England who had a vision to coach his way, which didn't match what the coach of the top tier team, Leeds United, was doing. Leeds' coach, Don Revie (Colm Meaney), sort of coddled his players and they got away with violence and cheating moves on the field, and Clough wanted players to play fair and respect the sport. Clough's asst coach is played by Timothy Spall.

Through his aggressive management, Clough managed to move his teams up to the top tier, so when Revie changes jobs, Clough is hired to coach for Leeds. But the Leeds men are still loyal to Revie and they never trust Clough, which sinks the team and Clough never gets a foothold into Leeds to lead them to victory. He lost his job after several weeks. He is noted as "the greatest coach England never had."

It was interesting to see a guy with a vision no one agrees with, I guess that is the definition of a vision. But the stats show that if Clough was given the opportunity to do things his way, he could lead teams to victory. He was just undermined by the Leeds team and upper management.

The book this was based on was written by David Peace (Red Riding trilogy) and film directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech).

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Moneyball involves the year Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, changes his tactics after too many years of team failure. The film starts out by comparing the budgets of the A's versus that of the New York Yankees, which was three or four times as high. Beane believes his hands are pretty tied because the owner of the A's won't shell out more money to buy better players for the roster.

During one year when all the GM's are wheeling and dealing to trade players prior to the start of the season, Beane visits with the Cleveland Indians management. There is a nameless analyst (Jonah Hill) who seems to be giving accurate tips to his management, and whom Beane notices in the meetings. The analyst, Peter Brand, is pretty much a peon though, so his analysis is not very valued by the Indians. But Beane can see Peter's intelligence and makes a bold move to hire him for the A's.

Brand's analytical style is based on statistics. He posits that two good players are equal to one great player, and they come with much smaller paychecks. He says many players who are undervalued, so Beane and Brand eventually have to force the team's manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and others to follow their new style by cutting old players from the team so their newly chosen players can get field time. This of course causes riffs among the long tenured scouts and team members, but Beane holds his ground while privately agonizing whether he is doing the right thing or not.

This film is sort of a nerds vs. jocks story, as Beane was once a promising athlete that burned out early, and he and Brand have to push their numbers theory onto the team. Similar to The Damned United, it is about a guy with a vision whom no one else agrees with, and despite proving his theory works, his efforts are derailed by people still mired in old ways of thinking and thinks the vision is a threat.

How the stories slightly differ is in the ending of the main characters of each movie. Beane considers how his decisions affect his homelife, and has to make the decision of family or a big paycheck.

Pitt's portrayal of Beane is very much a "Brad Pitt character," lots of quips and ironic remarks. Jonah Hill was pretty effective as the soft spoken analyst who, although he believes in his sytem, has to have someone else believe in him too to be able to carry it out. I think he is becoming a pretty good actor and slowly rounding out his career with roles like this one and Cyrus. Philip Seymour Hoffman, while pretty well physically personifying a ballclub manager (he reminded me of the Chicago Cubs' Don "Popeye" Zimmer), was not used very much but it was a good small role. Suporting players include Robin Wright as Beane's ex-wife and Keris Dorsey as Beane's daughter whom his personal life hinges on.