The Catcher Was a Spy<\/em>\u00a0begins with onscreen titles telling us that after the Nazis split the atom and put Dr. Heisenberg on the job of developing a bomb, the U.S. sent a Jewish baseball player-turned-spy to assassinate him. Color us intrigued! Alas, then the movie jumps back several years to show us what happened before the assassination mission, and the answer turns out to be, um, nothing. It\u2019s the same problem as with\u00a0The 15:17 to Paris<\/em>,\u00a0another movie built around a single incident where there\u2019s no story to tell until it\u2019s time for the incident, and so what are we doing here?<\/p>\n Our hero, Moe Berg, is played by Paul Rudd in his first dramatic leading role. Moe is a long-in-the-tooth catcher for the Red Sox who\u2019s nicknamed \u201cProfessor\u201d because he went to Princeton and speaks seven languages. Likable but enigmatic, Moe keeps his personal life to himself, not least because he is secretly bisexual. Even his longtime girlfriend, Estella (Sienna Miller), has no idea. When he\u2019s recruited by the OSS (precursor to the CIA), Moe points out that he\u2019s very good at keeping secrets.<\/p>\n A super-smart bisexual Major Leaguer who becomes a spy and is assigned to kill a Nazi scientist certainly\u00a0sounds<\/em>\u00a0interesting, and the supporting cast is great, but director Ben Lewin (The Sessions<\/em>) is hamstrung by two things. One, Robert Rodat\u2019s screenplay (adapted from Nicholas Dawidoff\u2019s book) is a dry recitation of biopic facts, only with fewer facts than usual because of Moe Berg\u2019s blasted secrecy. We learn nothing about what makes the man tick, nothing about his sexuality, nothing about his inner struggles. He\u2019s as much of a cypher at the end as he was at the beginning.<\/p>\n The other problem, it pains me to say, is that Paul Rudd \u2014 as charming, funny, and endearing as he is \u2014 lacks the emotional depth as an actor to play a serious, nuanced character (or at least one as difficult as this). The film feels like Rudd\u2019s audition for meatier roles, but bless him, he just doesn\u2019t pull it off.<\/p>\n The Catcher Was a Spy\u00a0begins with onscreen titles telling us that after the Nazis split the atom and put Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":9715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Grade: C<\/span><\/h3>\n
1 hr., 38 min.; rated R for\u00a0some sexuality, violence and language<\/em><\/h5>\n
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