The Catcher Was a Spy

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source: The Catcher Was a Spy

This is a long title for a movie, and it quite explains everything,the catcher which is American of course converted to be a spy for the Office of Strategic Services "which was been told as OSS repeatedly throughout the movie and i had to google it". So it's about a spy whose mission is to kill a German physicist to prevent him from developing the atomic bomb, or to just walk away if he found that he is not close to making it. The acting , the directing, the timeline , the music, the backwards & forwards style of storytelling, the beautiful background scenes of 30's, all of those are good point in the movie, other than that would be the costumes which i didn't find them remarkable nor the silly hair styling and fake looking wigs of some of the characters. The movie has a problem that it didn't give me enough background about our spy to justify his actions, like: Why did he even volunteer to the OSS ? How did he learn all those languages ? Why did he have the motive to not to kill the scientist ? How did he get all his degrees in spite of his busy time playing baseball ? The sexuality of "Moe Berg" is questionable in the movie and it was emphasised on which i find it unnecessary. Finally it's an average spy movie which follow a very steady rhythm without any special events, so action and suspense is not expected here, and you may feel a little bit bored.

It's hard to resist the baseball metaphors... For me the film never quite made it. It was certainly interesting enough, as Moe Berg was an interesting, multi-faceted person, but as a film, it was a bit flat and not hard hitting enough. I wondered whether it was because of Paul Rudd playing Berg; especially once Paul Giamatti was introduced I kept half-expecting them to start doing comedy, as they have together previously. In general I found the acting to be underwhelming, though as I often do, I'm not sure whether the cause of this was the acting or the script itself. Ironically, one of the reasons I watched it at all was because of the cast. I generally totally enjoy Paul Rudd and find Giamatti to be an excellent actor. Somehow the moderacy of the script didn't allow for them, especially Rudd, to transcend his pleasing, affable persona.

Sometimes the most fascinating stories related to World War II have nothing to do with battle action or strategic planning. And when celebrities from other disciplines are involved, the narrative can often defy credibility. Such was the case of actress Hedy Lamarr, who helped develop a torpedo guidance system that couldn't be jammed while still a German citizen (see "Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story"), or the story of corporate lawyer turned scientist, Alfred L. Loomis, who's team developed microwave radar and automatic anti-aircraft weapons during the war to help defeat the Nazis (see "American Experience: The Secret of Tuxedo Park"). Along the same lines is this story of Morris 'Moe' Berg, a fourteen year veteran as a catcher for the Boston Red Sox, who turned his linguistic skills and penchant for secrecy to good use as an agent for America's Office of Strategic Services. Berg is one of the most ambiguous and mysterious characters one could possibly imagine, someone who kept his sexual identity a secret and who quite accurately was described as a walking enigma by people who knew him. As an espionage story, this film moves along at a steady pace following an extremely brief look at Berg's (Paul Rudd) Major League baseball association. He virtually self recruits himself into government service by virtue of his extensive language skills, eventually being tapped for an exceedingly dangerous mission to assassinate the head of the Nazi nuclear weapons program, Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong). There are moments in the story when one might doubt his resolve to kill another human being, but the story deftly weaves a number of scenarios that bring Berg to that fateful moment when he's face to face with the acclaimed scientist, and Berg's salient intellect discerns that Heisenberg would not commit to developing a weapon that would aid the Nazi cause. The scene is done very subtly, and even then leaves room for doubt about Heisenberg's intentions, but the same scenario offers his response to the inevitability of Germany losing the war - "Is this really a secret"? In keeping with Berg's secretive nature, the closing narrative mentions that he was nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his wartime service, but he refused the honor without ever stating why. In the role, actor Rudd effectively portrays the enigmatic quality that must have inspired the real life Morris Berg, another in a long line of relatively unsung war heroes who's deeds helped turn the tide for the Allied cause.