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Thank you for the review. It sounds like something Lady ToE and I would enjoy.The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)
- This is the type of movie I complain isn't made anymore - a solid story-driven movie, with skilled actors (but not necessarily marquee stars) that keeps you engaged without special effects, unnecessary and exaggerated violence or an unbelievable dues ex machina
- Based on the true story of professional baseball player Morris (Moe) Berg - an enigmatic figure, Princeton graduate, polyglot (i.e., not your average ball player) - who is recruited by the OSS in WWII to potentially assassinate the German physicist Werner Heisenberg - putatively leading Germany's nuclear bomb effort. I'm sure liberties were taken, but at a high level, I believe the story is accurate
- Paul Rudd, while not looking like a Major League catcher, delivers a nuanced performance as Moe Berg, a highly intelligent man who keeps the world at arms length but is willing to risk his life for his country; however, you also believe he's doing it simply for the challenge and excitement. Jeff Daniels and Tom Wilkinson also bring their A-game with Paul Giamatti owning every scene he's in as an OSS scientific advisor acting as the moral compass challenging the government's win-at-all-cost instinct
- The dialogue is crisp and smart, the pace quick but not frantic and the tension comes from characters you care about and a story that did the work to build to its climax (really, anti-climax, I'll say no more). Add in beautiful cinematography, a few well-earned and organic-to-the-story action scenes and wonderful period details and the movie reminds me of a well-done Warner Brothers WWII-era spy drama (think "Watch on the Rhine") - just the type of movie I wish they made more of today