The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)

Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/zt13FFkDD1w

Moe Berg was a professional baseball player who played for a number of teams as a backup catcher over his 16 year career. He also had a knack for languages and this led him to working for the Office of Strategic Services during the second world war. One of his missions during the war is the subject of the 2018 movie _The Catcher Was a Spy_.

Paul Rudd plays Berg, and as the movie starts, we meet him during his baseball career. With the war unfolding the US begins working on The Manhattan Project and they suspect that there are some scientists in Germany who are also close to completing a nuclear bomb of some sort. Berg is despatched to Switzerland to look into one of the lead scientists and determine how close the Germans are to having a bomb. If they were close, Berg was to shoot the scientist. It's a small scale story told against the large scale of a world war, and the enormous pressure of the nuclear arms race.

This has a number of big names in it such as Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, and of course Paul Rudd in the lead as Moe Berg. I really enjoyed this and found myself drawn into the story. Rudd is engaging as the mysterious Berg and does a really good job of bringing this enigmatic character to life.

This is not a big loud action extravaganza, but rather an understated film, which is apropo as this is how Moe Berg was in real life. I think this movie flew under the radar when it came out, but I reckon it's definitely worth your time.

This should have been a better movie. There are complex characters, especially the titular spy that I am interested in learning more about, and an intriguing story set around World War 2. However, it fails to really deliver. The movie opens and closes with blocks of text giving an introduction and conclusion to the story, which sums up the disappointment; this should be part of the movie…

The movie is filled with an amazing cast; Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Tom Wilkinson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Paul Giamatti, Guy Pearce and Jeff Daniels, although only a few are used to any potential. Paul Rudd carries the movie, with his portrayal of an intelligent baseball player turned out-of-his-depth spy, but never seems phased by his task.

The screenplay tackles interesting ethical dilemmas and is a very personal character study. The undercurrent of lies and half-truths bleeds into our spy's personal life, with his sexual orientation questioned on numerous occasions.

There is a nice blend between set-up, character development and suspense, with a small but sturdy action sequence thrown in. Everyone is exquisitely dressed. The world is filled with a distinctive brown and green colour palette and is captured with a sometimes off-putting extremely shallow depth-of-field focus style.

For all the benefits, the movie seems to miss its marks. There is a lot of ground to cover and scenarios to introduce but it suffers because the runtime is only 94 minutes. Too much is either left unresolved (or just written at the end) or not given enough attention in the screenplay. Overall, the movie is fine and worth a watch, but it could've been much better.