A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The movie takes place before and during WWII, and covers the US government's attempts to infiltrate the Nazi atomic weapon program, and is centered around its protagonist Moe Berg who gets recruited to track down and possibly kill its head scientist Werner Heisenberg. A great cast made this film compelling, though I felt the movie could have benefited from being longer. Also the title is terrible and doesn't do this good movie justice

Ben Lewin has brought Nicholas Dawidoff 1994 biography about the mysterious Moe Berg. And Moe Berg remained a mystery until he died. Here's food for thought: when you think of Jews in baseball Moe Berg's name doesn't easily come to mind. Hank Grrenberg, yes. Sandy Kofax, for sure. Not Moe Berg who played for the Boston Red Sox during the 20s and the 30s. 'The Catcher was a Spy' is a conventional film with a fascinating 'hero': a polyglot, a polymath, born of Eastern Europeans Jews who settled in Harlem. And yet, Berg, played by a charming Paul Rudd who like his character celebrates tight lip secrecy. It is to Rudd's credit to have learned smatterings of six or seven languages to give body to his character who know many, many more. Berg graduated summa laude from Princeton when few Jews could attend. A lawyer from Columbia law who passed the bar before he finished his degree. Yet baseball was his life as was spying. The script writers give short shift to the spy Berg when he went to Japan with an all-star team that included Babe Ruth. We get the idea Berg dresses up as a Japanese in full kimono, armed with a camera films from the roof of a hospital Tokyo Harbor which had a dual use as a military facility. It would have taken too much to explain the prewar politics and the role of Japan invading Manchuria, testing America's and European empires' turf in Asia. So, although Berg was acting on behalf of a rudimentary US spy agency, Lewin's script white washes it as an act of a patriot. There is a 'love' story, but beneath the surface the film there is a flaw, a 'moral flaw' for the time. Was Berg queer? Probably. A scene of a night visit to the waterfront frequented by men, and non reputable bars frequented soley by men. Now to the film: Wild Bill Donovan, founder of the OSS, predecessor to the CIA, recruits Berg after Pearl Harbor. Donovan asks him if he's queer. And without a beat, Rudd replies, 'I know how to keep secrets'; to which Donovan replies, I don't care wo a man f--ks, I'm only interested if he's wants us to win the war'. Berg's assignment is to kill Werner Heisenberg, father of the German nuclear bomb. And here the film takes wings...and a high moment of the 'Catcher was a Spy' is when Rudd and Strong play mental chess, to fathom have the Germans the bomb. And here we see Berg has a dialectical frame of mind, he's willing to spare Heisenberg for an answer that Germany's nuclear project is not very advanced. (Heisenberg is the object of an award winning play "Copenhagen' that infers Heisenberg purposefully delayed Hitler's plans for a nuclear weapon.) The camera turns all over the place Japan, Italy, New York and Switzerland. Long shots, close shots, it runs the full alphabet of film making. Rudd speaks his languages fairly well with a good accent, but slips briefly when it comes to French. There is nothing dramatically wrong, but the film never plumbs the secretive Moe Berg. At the end we are told Berg never married and spent time in libraries. And yet he never left the CIAin mind and spirit and died the loner he was.

"The Catcher Was A Spy" (2018 release; 98 min.) brings the life and times of Moe Berg, "based on a true story". Before the movie begins in earnest, we are reminded that the Germans split the atom in 1938, marking the birth of the nuclear age. The Nazis chose Heisenberg to lead that effort. The movie opens with Berg approaching Heisenberg. IS Berg about to kill him? We then go "Eight Years Earlier" where we get to know Berg as a back-up catcher for the Red Sox in the twilight of his career, and someone who happens to have degrees from Princeton and Columbia Law, and speaks 7 languages fluently. At this point we are less than 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this is the latest from director Ben Lewin, who some 5 years ago brought us the delightful "The Sessions" comedy. Here he goes, based on the book of the same name, in a very different direction, examining the life of a remarkable man who ens up working for the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. How he, a baseball player, ends up there is of course one of the core attractions of the movie. With Paul Rudd cast as Moe Berg, the movie in theory has all the elements to be a terrific film. Alas, it was not to be. The acting performances all come across very wooden (you can practically hear Lewin yell "and... ACTION" at the beginning of a scene). Paul Rudd, Sienna Miller (as Berg's supposed girlfriend), Jeff Daniels (as the OSS officer), Tom Wilkinson (as a facilitator and dinner host), they all look utterly lost, desperately hoping for some direction that never comes. What should be a riveting real-life tale of spies and military drama, instead turns out to be a flat-out snooze-inducing, lifeless and boring bio-pic. What a darn shame and what a waste of acting and creative talent..."The Catcher Was A Spy" premiered at this year's Sundance film festival, and recently opened at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. I admit I was on the fence about seeing this, but ended up seeing this after all. The Wednesday (Independence Day) matinee screening where I saw this at was attended very nicely (25-30 people). If you are a fan of WWII dramas, and assuming you keep your expectations in check, I might suggest you check this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion. But I, for one, cannot in good conscience recommend this film.

A major league baseball player, Moe Berg, lives a double life working for the Office of Strategic Services. The bad thing about 'The Catcher was a Spy' is the fact that it's all over the place i mean at times is a bit comedic, some other times dramatic, then romantic and then again all serious and grumpy and this change of styles and moods is definitely giving me a headache as we speak. The acting wasn't that bad it's just that the overall storyline was really bad and written all over the place as a whole this wasn't even at least half watchable as Bridge of Spies was which was also a pretty bland film starring Tom Hanks and Amy Ryan. Definitely wait for Ant-Man and the Wasp at this point. (0/10)