Ignore the Critics: The Catcher Was a Spy is Good

 

THE CATCHER WAS A SPY (2018)

Directed by Ben Lewin

IFB Films, 98 minutes, R (milder language and even milder sexuality)

★★★★

 

 

 

 

The Catcher Was a Spy made less than a million dollars. I was in good company by missing it in the cinema. I also skipped it because the reviews were pretty bad. News scoop: The reviewers are full of crap.

 

The movie follows Moe Berg, an ex-major league player who spied for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner of the CIA—during World War Two. Some of the film is Hollywoodized, but reviewers called it bland, unconvincing, and lacking in action. Guess not enough things blew up! The title is an obvious play on words, but the tale itself is true.

 

Berg (1902-72) was a journeyman catcher for five teams between 1923-36, the last of which was the Red Sox, for whom he also coached during 1940-41. He was a journeyman for a reason; his career batting average was a paltry .243 (yeah, I know, that would make him a superstar today!) with little power. Teammates called him “professor” because he graduated from Columbia Law, spoke seven foreign languages fluently, several more passably, and starred on the radio show Information, Please. Berg kept his own company and his private life was carefully guarded.  

 

Berg was also Jewish. Contrary to myth, Major League Baseball (MLB) did not discourage Jewish players and there were more than Berg and Hank Greenburg. They did, however, suffer from the widespread anti-Semitism prevalent in American society. When the war started, Berg felt it his duty as a Jew to stop Germany, even though he was a thoroughly secular agnostic. At 40, he was fined to desk jobs until he was tapped by the OSS for a dangerous mission.

 

The film picks up Berg (Paul Rudd) at the end of his baseball career and provides telescoped background (some of it speculative) before he caught the attention of OSS head Brigadier General “Wild Bill” Donovan (Jeff Bridges), who placed him under the command of Robert Furman (Guy Pearce), who was also working on the Manhattan Project. Berg and contacts that included physicists Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti), Paul Sherrer (Tom Wilkinson), and Edoardo Amaldi (Giancarlo Giannini) were tasked with luring Werner Heisenberg to Zurich to ascertain whether the Germans were close to developing an atomic weapon or was secretly stalling the program.

 

If necessary, Berg was authorized to assassinate Heisenberg. If that name rings bells, he was a Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist who also developed the uncertainty principle. Don’t ask me to explain it; I’d have a better shot of decoding quacking ducks than quantum physics. Suffice it to say there was a critical need to derail Germany’s development of a fission weapon.

 

Oddly, numerous critics ignored what was really improbable in the film and seemed to think the true stuff was made up. There is a scene in which Berg plays ball with American GIs who have just taken an Italian town from the Nazis. One soldier recognizes Berg, who proceeds to hit a moonshot over the ruins of a multi-storey building. That’s unlikely. Who, in the pre- television age, would recognize a marginal player? How does a guy who hit six homers in 13 years tattoo a tape-measure blast?

 

Rudd’s performance was labeled passive and laconic. Umm… he was a spy, a profession known for keeping things close to the vest. Nor did critics jump on made-up inferences that Berg was gay or bisexual, yet lambasted him as unconvincing. What did they want, a teary bathhouse confessional in the arms of his male lover? Not that I care one way or the other, but there is no evidence that Berg was gay. In the film we watch him bend Estella Huni (Sienna Miller) over a piano for sweaty sex. I suppose it’s feasible the tasty Miller would tempt someone of any persuasion, but Huni’s brother said she was the love of the bachelor Berg’s life. Rumors he was homosexual say more about mid-century-not-so-modern gender roles than Berg’s actual preferences.  

 

For the most part, the acting is solid in The Catcher Was a Spy. Giamatti perhaps chews too much scenery, but that’s what he does. Mark Strong is superb as the icy-veined Heisenberg, and I personally found Rudd’s performance letter-perfect in capturing the enigmatic Berg. This film will never be considered a classic, but it’s a good film to watch as the MLB season winds down.*

 

Rob Weir

 

  * I caught it on Kanopy.