Can statistics beat human intuition? That's essentially the awkward thrust of Bennett Miller's "Moneyball," a sometimes-engaging and sometimes-laborious contribution to the hallowed hall of baseball movies. You can wrap up the themes in as many layers of movie magic as you want – Brad Pitt in a "serious" and award-worthy role, an underdog team outspent by the big bad Yankees, a phenomenal come-from-behind winning streak, the tech geeks beating out the establishment, lots of slow-mo shots of balls soaring heavenward – but in the end, we're asked in "Moneyball" to root for the number-crunchers.

It's a testament to Miller that the concept works as well as it does.

"Moneyball," based on the book by Michael Lewis, follows the 2002 run of the Oakland A's, that odd and hypnotic season when general manager Billy Beane (a slow-burning and focused Pitt) decided to turn the game on its ear. Forget about finding ballplayers with high batting averages and runs batted in, Beane proclaimed. Instead, gather together the guys with the best on-base and slugging percentages, a much less star-driven measurement.

I don't know much about baseball statistics, but evidently, this strategy on the part of Beane and some inspired underlings (in the movie, a composite character named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, represents this group), really yanked establishment baseball's chain. It allowed the budget-strapped A's, who had lost its best players the season before to wealthier teams, to cobble together an unlikely lineup of near-misfits and has-beens that surprised everyone.

You can look at "Moneyball" a couple of ways. One is as straight-ahead docudrama, and in this capacity, it delivers a fairly compelling account of the A's unlikely season and exciting winning streak.

Like any film treatment of history, it smooths over some of the details. ("Moneyball" evidently just decided to ignore some of the incredible pitching talent that the A's had that season, presumably because it didn't fit into a tidy story line, which will likely alienate some purists.) But that's to be expected. The game sequences, which make up a relatively small share of a too-long 133-minute running time, are briskly shot, and Miller finds a bemused tone in the backstage-clubhouse proceedings that's neither too wacky nor ponderous.

Pitt ekes out every actorly moment he can underplaying Beane as a coarse saint, reveling in Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin's crisp screenplay. It's all fine, but the character never really seems worth the oodles of screen time we spend in his presence, even when we toss in his ex-wife (Robin Wright) and daughter (Kerris Dorsey) to expand on his personal life. Hill, skipping the funny stuff, is a treat as the earnest Brand, and Philip Seymour Hoffman puts a grizzled stamp on the role of manager Art Howe.

The other way to look at the film is more big-picture metaphorical, which I'm certain is what drew Miller and Pitt to the project. You can get pretty deep here, including the idea that Beane was merely pursuing capitalism to its logical extremes – of using technology to put his competitors at a disadvantage.

On this level, the film didn't really click for me. On one side: the establishment, with its emphasis on hidebound traditions and trust in the idea that scouting a player on the basis of essentially his "ballplayer soul" is the best way to predict a star. On the other: crunching the numbers. Not exactly a rousing conflict.

Sure, it gets complicated. Capitalism ensures that the other teams try the same tricks, and the market adjusts, which must explain why the A's don't win the World Series every year.

And yet, all this gets wrapped up and tied with a big, romantic, baseball-as-life-changing bow. "Moneyball" avoids many of the clichés of a typical sports movie. But in doing so, it loses some of the zing that gives the genre so much heart.