Sports films are often about the tensions on the field and the high-octane gameplays. But in Moneyball it is about making a team and setting them up for the season. And that is no easy task for the baseball team Oakland Athletics – the smallest team in the league if one counts finances.

Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the team’s general manager, with complete ownership and charm. He is a solitary and introverted guy, who’s frustrated with himself and the standard way his team is selected by his ancient scouting team. At times he looks tired, drawn and uninspired and carelessly daring when he jumps on with the plan to choose players by statics numbers – an idea introduced by Peter Brand. If the idea failed, Beane would be the most unemployable man in sports by the end of the season.

Moneyball is semi-fictional, based on the bestselling non-fiction book Moneyball by Michael Lewis with story by Stan Chervin, written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin – both have in the past produced standout work. Zaillian’s hard grip on drama and Sorkin’s flare with dialogue, both evidently present, give this sport film a more unconventional treatment by dipping into human behavior, rather than the sport itself.

Directed by Bennett Miller of Capote fame, the film carefully surfaces personality and emotion, be it the office drama and cold ego wars of Beane and team manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) or the shy, over weight unsure economics wiz Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) or Beane himself, who is so knotted that he can’t watch the way his team play in the stadium, so he works out in the gym or goes on long drives, hears snip bits of the matches on the radio or television. Moneyball talks about the business of sport and numbers and stats but ironically it’s about the emotions concerning it. Like Beane, Pitt had a lot betting on this film, which he also produced, and it turns out to be a sound bet. — Farheen Jawaid