The Catcher Was a Spy

First off, the movie is very well cast. It is slow with just a little bit of action in the middle and it is not very thrilling either. Which is OK it is not meant to be an action movie or thriller. It is a drama in the typical sense. Unfortunately it is not very deep on characters or story. A lot is hinted, nothing really shown. Maybe a bit more runtime to deepen the story could have helped. Not awful or a waste of time but nothing you'd watch repeatedly.

Paul Rudd brings wry reserve and quiet purpose to the role of Moe Berg, a real-life major-league baseball player during the nineteen-twenties and thirties, and a multilingual Princeton graduate who played a crucial part in the Second World War. The movie, based on a true story, shows Berg—sent with such athletes as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on a prewar junket to Japan—undertaking some freelance espionage on behalf of the U.S. government. Then, when the war begins, Berg volunteers for service and is sent to Europe to determine whether the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong) is attempting to build an atomic bomb—and, if so, to kill him. The script, by Robert Rodat, skips around in time to elucidate the amped-up drama, but it never gets close to Berg’s own character. The film, directed by Ben Lewin, strongly suggests that Berg was gay, but leaves the theme undeveloped.