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I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

On the surface, The Catcher was a Spy, appears to be a great idea for a film. It's based on the meticulously researched book of the same name, about Moe Berg (Paul Rudd), a Princeton graduate turned professional baseball player in the 1930s, who later became a spy for the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) in World War II. Director Ben Lewin called upon screenwriter Robert Rodat (known primarily for writing Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan) to flesh out Berg's character-a difficult job as Berg's life was shrouded in mystery. Quite a bit of it calls for speculation; perhaps an exceptional writer could have done something with the material, but Rodat is clearly not up to the task. Still I'm hesitant to criticize the writing here too much, as it's an insanely difficult subject to dramatize. Part of the problem is that Berg's relationships were superficial and never lasted for long periods of time. Hence, his interactions with various characters (baseball players, a girlfriend, a commanding officer for example) are short-lived, leading to a lack of character development. We feel particularly cheated in seeing little of Berg's baseball days. An opportunity is perhaps lost when Berg is shown taking the 1934 "goodwill" tour to Japan with baseball stars including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. I would have liked to have seen and heard from some of those luminaries which could have given the film a little more flavor. His "spying" while in Japan, shooting home movies of industrial areas in Tokyo, is certainly interesting but there's little excitement (at best his homosexuality is hinted at in his interactions with a Japanese professor who predicts the coming world conflict). The scene in which he fights back when a Boston Red Sox player assaults him for being "queer," felt forced. Did that really happen? He's attacked for merely being an intellectual and "possibly" being a homosexual? That's something he never admitted to so I found it to be unlikely that a teammate would jeopardize his own career by doing such a thing (especially when Berg was a popular figure in the media at the time). The bulk of the film concerns Berg joining the OSS and being given the assignment of trying to find out whether the German physicist Werner Heisenberg was close to developing an atomic bomb for the Nazis. The one "action" scene in the film takes place in Italy, where Berg is paired with another scientist, Samuel Goudsmit (Paul Giamatti), and both are almost killed when they come under fire while attempting to locate and interview an Italian confidant of Heisenberg. Again, the unlikely scene of the two intellectuals surviving hellish combat was not particularly convincing. The finale is wholly anti-climactic where Berg comes face to face with Heisenberg, but decides not to assassinate him as he concludes that the scientist is not close to developing a bomb for his German taskmasters. Of course it's fairly well known that Heisenberg survived the war, so Berg's machinations are not very exciting at all. Both the director and screenwriter hold up Berg as some kind of hero, but history suggests otherwise. After the war, Berg never worked another day in his life, primarily freeloading off his brother who finally kicked him out of his house-he then went to live with his sister for the rest of his days. There was also the suggestion that he may have been involved in touching young children inappropriately. The Catcher was a Spy proves to be a mildly interesting survey of Moe Berg's life, best summed up as a series of vignettes that shed little insight into the man's character. Paul Rudd is saddled with a script that only hints at aspects of Berg's personality and ultimately he fails to convince us that Berg was a heroic character.

Wish it had been another half hour longer. It was a great movie, and based on a really cool guy, Moe Berg. I really liked him and it was cool to see Paul Rudd in a drama. I would definitely recommend this movie.

Well acted and filmed. As much a biography that enlightens about a fairly unknown story as a spy story. The negative reviews seem to be by those hoping for a baseball flick.

This film tells the story of a catcher turned spy's secret mission in Europe int eh Second World War.The story is captivating throughout. Paul Rudd's mysterious character has a charm and has complexity which draws you to him. He is magnetic and makes you emphathise with him. I enjoyed the film a lot.