Butler's Cinema Scene

Paul Rudd as Moe Berg

“THE CATCHER WAS A SPY” My rating: C+

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Crammed with famous faces and centering on a bit of real-life WW2 cloak-and-dagger that almost defies credulity, “The Catcher Was a Spy” is both a thriller and a flawed character study of a man who refused to be characterized.

Indeed, even before he was recruited by the O.S.S. and trained to be an assassin, Morris “Moe” Berg (portrayed here by Paul Rudd…probably too boyish for the role) was a bundle of puzzling contradictions.

Berg had degrees from Columbia, Princeton and the Sorbonne; he spoke seven or eight languages fluently and could get by in several others.

Yet he made his living as a professional baseball player, serving as the second string catcher for the Boston Red Sox.

As presented in Ben Lewin’s film, he is well spoken, erudite and bisexual, augmenting his domestic life with a live-in girlfriend (Sienna Miller) with visits to underground gay nightspots.

Shortly before the beginning of the war Berg was named to an all star team (Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig participated) on a good will tour of Japan.  While there he became convinced that war was inevitable and, on his own, climbed to the roof of a Tokyo skyscraper so that he could film military installations and harbor facilities.

He later presented his reels to William “Wild Bill” Donovan (Jeff Daniels), then running the O.S.S., the precursor to the C.I.A. Donovan was sufficiently impressed by Berg’s intellect, patriotism and facility with foreign languages to give him a job…but not before asking: “Are you queer?”

Berg’s answer sealed the deal: “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

Most of “The Catcher Was a Spy” centers on an OSS plan to assassinate Werner Heisenberg, the German scientist regarded as the father of quantum mechanics and now heading up the Third Reich’s fledgling nuclear program. Berg is assigned to confront Heisenberg (Mark Strong) while on a visit to neutral Switzerland, determine if the German program is a real threat, and shoot the scientist if that seems to be the case.

This is no easy task.  Berg must enter newly-liberated Rome with our fighting troops, save an Italian physicist (Giancarlo Giannini) from a Nazi death squad  and pick his brain about his old colleague Heisenberg.  Then it’s off to Switzerland for a showdown.

The problem, of course, is that Berg may be killing an innocent man. In fact, there’s reason to believe that Heisenberg has been surreptitiously slowing the German program, lest Hitler be the first one to get his hands on an atomic bomb. What’s Berg, a man of conscience, to do?

“Catcher…Spy” has a ridiculously deep cast — Paul Giamatti, Guy Pearce, Tom Wilkinson, Connie Nielsen, Shea Whigham — and first-rate production design.

At the center of it all is Rudd’s Berg.  This KC-reared actor is know primarily for his comedy chops; here he plays Berg with a mix of physical action and suave sophistication without ever really nailing the man underneath. At least his watchability helps balance out the fact that Berg was a frustrating enigma.

The screenplay by Robert Rodat (“Saving Private Ryan,” “Fly Away Home,” “The Patriot,” “Thor: The Dark World”) deftly shifts  between Berg’s dangerous mission and his civilian back story, and features some bracingly articulate dialogue. And yet chunks feel phony and overstated, especially a big battle scene that feels as if it belongs to another movie.

Perhaps less would have been more.

| Robert W. Butler