One of my biggest pet peeves in the cinematic realms is biopics that do not get it right. It is not like Hollywood remakes people’s life stories! Sadly, that is the case with the often compelling, but overall shoddily put together The Catcher was a Spy.
It is an important film about an American hero that was shrouded in mystery in life, and after his death. Moe Berg was a major league catcher for 15 years, many with the Boston Red Sox, before World War II saw him volunteering to help his country. He was also a highly intellectual professor who spoke seven languages fluently and several others conversationally. Berg was also Jewish battling a country in Germany that was slaughtering his people. It was also hinted that he was gay and the fact that he remained a bachelor until his passing did nothing to dispel that rumor. With those two strikes against him in 1940s America, he still rose to the occasion of being tasked with heading behind enemy lines and assassinating none other than German physicist, Werner Karl Heisenberg—the man who was supposedly trying to build Germany’s atomic bomb.
Needless to say, if Heisenberg was successful in that effort, there is no question that the world would be speaking German in the booming fifties instead of living in America’s great expansive success story.
Paul Rudd is Berg and the Ant-Man and the Wasp star brings as much charisma to the character as is possible, given the shoddily put together and choppy script, not to mention the flailing editing the film suffers under. It clocks in at 98 minutes and, perhaps, if director Ben Lewin had allowed it, The Catcher was a Spy might have had more time to breathe and thus… given its characters and story a breadth that they require and we as audience members desire. The subject matter is utterly fascinating. It is just in the form delivered to audiences, it is a pure swing and a miss.
Based on the book by Nicholas Dawidoff, screenwriter Robert Rodat has Reader’s Digest-ed this epic true tale into a collage of a man’s life whose persona and person were worthy of so much more. Heck, this is a man who was awarded the highest honor in America, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now, he declined it… which in itself is a fascinating element to this rich life.
There are plenty of World War II films that do not live up to the Greatest Generation that inhabits them. Yet, it also is a subject matter that has given us some of the most fabulous films of all-time. Berg embodied those men and women who left their comfortable lives in America and headed overseas to battle an enemy that sought to bring an end to freedom. Ever moment away from home could have been their last and when a World War II film captures that fine line between hero and casualty, it pays tribute to those selfless warriors. With The Catcher was a Spy, the battle sequences and their cost in terms of lives lost and sacrifices made are treated like they emerged from an 80s made-for-TV movie. It’s sad.
Rudd is fine and does his best to play all the positions necessary to make a film work. But, even his charm cannot save this film from something just below mediocrity.
The Catcher was a Spy has a stellar cast as well. Jeff Daniels stars as Berg’s CO in a role that is important but comes off as thankless. Paul Giamatti is miscast—cannot believe that sentence exists, given that the actor is one of our best. Mark Strong is Heisenberg and like Rudd, does his best with what is given. For starters, his German accent is… well, never there while Giamatti’s is almost too thick. Sienna Miller is serviceable as Berg’s female love interest, even if the story literally never gets her out of their New York apartment. And last, but not least, Guy Pearce—another The Movie Mensch fave—has to witness this film in its completed form and wonder what he ever saw in it.
The film’s saving grace are the scenes between Berg and Heisenberg. The former is in Europe to determine whether he believes the latter is working on an atomic weapon. If he thinks he is, the physicist must be assassinated. If Berg comes to understand he is not… well then that is an entirely different outcome. When the two characters finally meet, sparks finally fly onscreen. Their literal and figurative chess moves are a delight. We just wish that chess-like attention had been paid to this entire effort.
This is a life that warrants the world discovering its importance. Sadly, The Catcher was a Spy fails him, his contributions to saving democracy and how astounding it is that a Jewish soldier (and former baseball player… also a rarity to find Jewish souls in the majors), managed to play a vital role in turning the tide of a war against a foe seeking to wipe his people off the planet.
Grade: C-