The Catcher Was a Spy

It reminds me of the Steven Spielberg, Tom hanks collaboration, Bridge of Spies, but did not hit me as hard.

World war 2 was the type of war that all good Americans wanted to be a part of, so no surprise that a Major baseball player (our fav pastime) wanted to get in on the action.

Moe Berg was an over the hill baseball player who happen to have went to college and became a master of a lot of languages. Right there, he sounds like the type of spy they make TV shows out of, which is why I think this movie is so good.

Paul Rudd was good at playing this type of spy too. I felt it to be believable in the situation. Possible not that important, but I like it none the less. Not exactly James Bond but Rudd used his overall charming and humorous persona to be the leading man this movie needs.

Good Watch.

I like Paul Rudd a lot. He's very likeable. I don't fault casting for why this movie wasn't as good as it could have been (as I've seen some other reviewers do). Ultimately, I think this movie falls short more because it didn't know quite what it wanted to be. Was it a serious historical drama about a spy with suspense set during war times? Kind of. In moments. But it also felt very light at times given the subject matter. It never went deep enough into it to make you care or for you to feel scared for the welfare of the characters involved.

In an intriguing story about an intriguing true life individual.

He was very ably supported by a very talented cast.

Interestingly. I'd only recently seen the 1946 film "Cloak And Dagger", starring Lilli Palmer and Gary Cooper, which touched on the same issue of an American spy going to Italy and Switzerland in an effort to prevent the nazis from developing a nuclear weapon.

But this story was much more than that, looking at various facets of the fascinating life of Moe Berg.

There are going to be lovers and haters of this movie depending on your taste and how much you like to pick holes in the acting and plot. Picky people will find many in this movie.

With all the big name actors it had you would expect it to be at least good and for me it was, I enjoyed it and never once wanted to stop watching, for me that is a sign of a good movie.

Paul Rudd, who I don't always like as and actor was very good in this, the rest of the cast do a fine job, most are prominent actors who I expect to do well in any movie they are in.

The fact it is based on a true story can be either a benefit of hindrance depending on how the story is handled, this one was handled quite well in my opinion and while it will never win any awards it is worth watching.

Not a perfect movie, but good enough to watch more than once.

Ben Lewin has brought Nicholas Dawidoff 1994 biography about the mysterious Moe Berg. And Moe Berg remained a mystery until he died. Here's food for thought: when you think of Jews in baseball Moe Berg's name doesn't easily come to mind. Hank Grrenberg, yes. Sandy Kofax, for sure. Not Moe Berg who played for the Boston Red Sox during the 20s and the 30s. 'The Catcher was a Spy' is a conventional film with a fascinating 'hero': a polyglot, a polymath, born of Eastern Europeans Jews who settled in Harlem. And yet, Berg, played by a charming Paul Rudd who like his character celebrates tight lip secrecy. It is to Rudd's credit to have learned smatterings of six or seven languages to give body to his character who know many, many more. Berg graduated summa laude from Princeton when few Jews could attend. A lawyer from Columbia law who passed the bar before he finished his degree. Yet baseball was his life as was spying. The script writers give short shift to the spy Berg when he went to Japan with an all-star team that included Babe Ruth. We get the idea Berg dresses up as a Japanese in full kimono, armed with a camera films from the roof of a hospital Tokyo Harbor which had a dual use as a military facility. It would have taken too much to explain the prewar politics and the role of Japan invading Manchuria, testing America's and European empires' turf in Asia. So, although Berg was acting on behalf of a rudimentary US spy agency, Lewin's script white washes it as an act of a patriot. There is a 'love' story, but beneath the surface the film there is a flaw, a 'moral flaw' for the time. Was Berg queer? Probably. A scene of a night visit to the waterfront frequented by men, and non reputable bars frequented soley by men. Now to the film: Wild Bill Donovan, founder of the OSS, predecessor to the CIA, recruits Berg after Pearl Harbor. Donovan asks him if he's queer. And without a beat, Rudd replies, 'I know how to keep secrets'; to which Donovan replies, I don't care wo a man f--ks, I'm only interested if he's wants us to win the war'. Berg's assignment is to kill Werner Heisenberg, father of the German nuclear bomb. And here the film takes wings...and a high moment of the 'Catcher was a Spy' is when Rudd and Strong play mental chess, to fathom have the Germans the bomb. And here we see Berg has a dialectical frame of mind, he's willing to spare Heisenberg for an answer that Germany's nuclear project is not very advanced. (Heisenberg is the object of an award winning play "Copenhagen' that infers Heisenberg purposefully delayed Hitler's plans for a nuclear weapon.) The camera turns all over the place Japan, Italy, New York and Switzerland. Long shots, close shots, it runs the full alphabet of film making. Rudd speaks his languages fairly well with a good accent, but slips briefly when it comes to French. There is nothing dramatically wrong, but the film never plumbs the secretive Moe Berg. At the end we are told Berg never married and spent time in libraries. And yet he never left the CIAin mind and spirit and died the loner he was.