THE CATCHER WAS A SPY – Review

Sienna Miller as Estella Huni, and Paul Rudd as Moe Berg, in Ben Lewin’s THE CATCHER WAS A SPY. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.

THE CATCHER WAS A SPY is a strange slice of history, about a real-life Jewish Major League baseball catcher with a degree from Princeton and a knack for languages who turned spy during World War II. As catcher Moe Berg, Paul Rudd heads an impressive cast in a historical film with polished good looks and a score by Howard Shore. The film assembled all the right elements for a prestige biopic but does not quite score a hit.

THE CATCHER WAS A SPY is available on-demand from IFC  starting Friday, June 22, and in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

Part biopic and part WWII spy thriller, THE CATCHER WAS A SPY focuses on a particular part of Moe Berg’s life. Director Ben Lewin (THE SESSIONS) based his film on Nicholas Dawidoff’s biography of Morris “Moe” Berg, a remarkable individual better known as “the brainiest guy in baseball” than for his skill as a catcher. Berg was a Princeton graduate who also attended the Sorbonne and Columbia Law School, who spoke several languages and read several newspapers a day. He was a brilliant but secretive man who was a mystery to those around him. Unfortunately, director Lewin gives us the facts of his unique story but little insight into this curious character.

Paul Rudd brings leading man good looks and his irresistible appeal to his portrayal of Moe Berg, who the film introduces in the waning days of his long but undistinguished baseball career. Rudd plays Berg as a likable fellow but a bundle of contradictions and questions, with a hint of darkness underneath. Berg hardly embraces his Jewish identity but is quiet about it nonetheless, which is understandable in that anti-Semitic era. But Berg is secretive about his personal life as well. He was not married but has a girlfriend Estella (Sienna Miller) who he keeps hidden despite rumors about him being gay in this homophobic era. As his baseball career winds down and WWII ramps up, Berg is eager to use his language skills to help the war effort and actively campaigns to join the military intelligence division.

He makes a connection with Bill Donovan (Jeff Daniels), the head of the OSS, the intelligence service that will become the CIA. However, the active, energetic Berg is frustrated behind a desk. Eventually Donovan finds a use for the brainy ball player. Berg becomes part of plan to find out how far along the Nazis are in their quest to build an atomic bomb, and possibly to assassinate the German scientist leading their effort, Dr. Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong).

Actually, this story focuses on two historical figures who left unanswered questions. The other one is Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize winning German theoretical physicist, developer of quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Despite his private disapproval of the Nazis, Heisenberg remained in his native country out of a sense of patriotism when they take over. When war comes, the Nazis put him in charge of their effort to build an atomic bomb but historians have debated for years whether Heisenberg was really trying to build a bomb or delaying the Nazis while pursing his own research.

This is truly a star-studded film and throughout we encounter name actors, sometimes in surprisingly small roles. Guy Pearce plays a Army officer assigned to get Berg and physicist Sam Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti) through enemy lines to rescue an Italian physicist (Italian legend Giancarlo Giannini) from the retreating Nazis, hoping for information on their atomic bomb research. Tom Wilkinson plays another physicist, Dr. Scherrer, a Swiss-based friend of Heisenberg, that becomes part of the mission. Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada (TWILIGHT SAMURAI, LOST) appears in a small part, as a Japanese official Berg meets on trip to Japan shortly before Pearl Harbor, for a demonstration baseball game played by a team that includes Babe Ruth (Jordan Long) and Lou Gehrig (James McVan) as well as Berg.

How could a film about such remarkable characters and events be dull? Yet director Lewin fails to find the spark in this story. We never get inside Berg’s head and he remains opaque. One can’t blame Rudd, who makes valiant efforts to draw the character out. It is hard to know what went wrong but Lewin fails to find a way into the heart of the story and takes a decidedly serious, just-the-facts approach to Berg’s life, hardly even allowing a sly, ironic smile despite all the absurdities in Berg’s mysterious, contradictory life.

One can’t help but feel like THE CATCHER WAS A SPY is a missed chance for a much better movie. It is a strike-out that failed to swing for the fences despite all the right elements.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars