Vapid ‘The Catcher Was a Spy’ drops the ball
Moe Berg’s life should make for a killer movie.
The Jewish Major League Baseball player was a brilliant polylinguist turned spy following the attack on Pearl Harbor, tasked with assassinating famed Nobel Prize-winning physicist Werner Heisenberg to prevent the creation of a Nazi atomic bomb. That kind of life story should be a Hollywood gold mine.
Why, then, is “The Catcher Was a Spy” so vapid?
Ben Lewin’s historical espionage drama spreads itself too thin, feeling at once overstuffed and too lean for its relatively
spare 98-minute running time as it takes us from Fenway Park to Japan, from European battlefields to
Swiss salons in Berg’s quest to help the United States win WWII. “The Catcher Was a Spy” only ever penetrates the surface – of Berg’s psyche, of heroism in the face of evil, of America’s pastime – so that historical events ostensibly thrilling are rendered rote.
Played with a knowing smirk by Paul Rudd, Berg is getting a little long in the tooth for a game his heart is no longer in. The Boston Red Sox catcher needs a new game, and a second career in espionage turns out to be a perfect fit for an antisocial genius fluent in seven languages. He occupies rarefied intellectual air, making him the ideal man to square off tete-a-tete with Heisenberg (Mark Strong in an unfortunate wig), who may or may not be aiding Nazi Germany in the creation of an A-bomb.
Berg isn’t just a keeper of secrets, but a man of secrets too. Despite his longterm relationship with girlfriend Estella (Sienna Miller), Berg is a confirmed bachelor in an era where that status raised eyebrows. We’re give more than enough hints to draw the desired conclusion: a man’s hand held a few seconds too long and one side of the bed left conspicuously empty the next morning, whispered suspicions among his teammates, a steadfast refusal to take Estella along on international trips.
Berg is an enigma to the people around him. The problem is, he remains an enigma to us, too, as the movie never invites us into his inner sanctum. Berg’s tortured sexuality is one of the few points of human connection through which the audience can empathize with Berg, and even that is only implied.
It also underwhelms as a spy thriller. When Berg finally comes face to face with Heisenberg – a moment that should be fraught with peril – the movie undermines the moment by turning their confrontation into a literal chess match, a cinematic cliché of the most vapid order.
What pleasures there are, then, are shallow. The imagery is romantically period, with textured scenes staged in handsomely lit smoke-filled rooms, its newsreels and baseball stadiums suffused with charming Americana.
But you can’t root for set design or feel empathy for colored filters. You need human beings for that, and “The Catcher Was a Spy” keeps its heart under lock and key.