Brad Pitt plays the game in ‘Moneyball'

Baseball is a game of numbers, but for years that's not the way the people who ran the game treated it before Billy Beane came along.

Beane, the rebel general manager of the Oakland A's, is depicted in the intelligently energetic drama "Moneyball" as a roguish hero who broke the unwritten rules of baseball. We know he's a roguish hero because he's played by Brad Pitt, his shoulder-length locks falling back casually as he unloads that shy smile with the deceptive power of a Rich Harden curveball.

In "Moneyball," adapted from Michael Lewis' book with a sharp script credited to Oscar winners Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List") and Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network"), Beane is in a bind in 2001. His A's are eliminated, again, in the American League Division Series to the New York Yankees -- a team whose payroll is four times what the A's pay.

This review is from The Salt Lake Tribune. To continue reading, please visit sltrib.com.