Subject proves fascinating, but film falls flat

Morris “Moe” Berg was an odd duck.

The baseball player and coach — who played 15 seasons for a handful of major-league teams, including the Washington Senators in the early 1930s — came to be known as the “brainiest guy in baseball.”

He spoke several languages. He had an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia. And he appeared as a regular contestant on the radio quiz show “Information Please,” where he would dazzle listeners with his knowledge of word origins. Despite being a mediocre player, he was a favorite of sports journalists, whom he entertained with his erudition.

He was also a U.S. government spy.

During World War II, Berg worked for the Office of Strategic Services (or OSS, a precursor to the CIA), where he joined a team assigned to determine how close Germany was to developing the atomic bomb. If necessary, Berg was to assassinate the principal architect of the Nazis’ nuclear ambitions: physicist Werner Heisenberg.

All of this fascinating background was well-documented in Nicholas Dawidoff’s biography “The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg.” The 1994 bestseller has now been made into a movie starring Paul Rudd and directed by Ben Lewin (“The Sessions”).

Ironically, the film is conspicuous not for its brio but its blandness.

Despite the colorful Directed by Ben Lewin. MPAA rating: R (for some sexuality, violence and language) Running time: 1:38 Now showing at the Gateway Film Center

character at its center, and a likable-if-somewhat impassive performance by Rudd, “The Catcher Was a Spy” is a dutiful laundry list of a biopic, ticking off boxes in Berg’s career — brainiac, athlete, loner, secular Jew, secret agent and, as the film strongly suggests, closeted gay man — without ever shedding light on what makes him tick.

Berg’s sexuality will be the source of filmgoers’ greatest frustrations; “The Catcher” brings it up, only to strain to make narrative sense of it. There’s the overly on-the-nose dialogue, in a screenplay by Robert Rodat, suggesting that Berg’s gayness made him a better spy: “I like to hide,” he tells a Japanese man (Hiroyuki Sanada) with whom he might or might not have been flirting, during a prewar trip to Japan for an exhibition game.

Later, in response to a direct question about his sexuality from his OSS boss (Jeff Daniels) — who notes, with vulgarity, that he doesn’t care about Berg’s sleeping partners — Berg replies coyly, “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

Besides Daniels, the film’s fine supporting cast features solid performances from Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson and Giancarlo Giannini as celebrated physicists; Guy Pearce as Berg’s gruff Army handler; Sienna Miller as his frustrated girlfriend; and Mark Strong as Heisenberg.

As for Heisenberg, the film’s central mystery centers on how Berg will determine whether the scientist, who has so far not managed to build the bomb, is merely incompetent or, as a potential Allied sympathizer, has been deliberately dragging his feet.

Despite sterling performances, “The Catcher Was a Spy” ultimately loses its luster in the murk surrounding the man it calls a “walking enigma.” Who really was Moe Berg? The man who, it is said, liked to smile and place a finger to his lips when asked about his life as a spy, probably wouldn’t tell you.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that this movie — however frustrating — doesn’t, either.

“The Catcher Was a Spy.”