The opening title cards for The Catcher Was a Spy, directed by Please Stand By’s Ben Lewin, lays out a plot tailor-made for something like Drunk History: It’s the year 1944 and the O.S.S. is worried that Germany might have the means to craft an atom bomb. So America sent a Jewish baseball player for the Boston Red Sox — who also frequents gay bars on the down low — to assassinate the Nazis’ physicist, Werner Heisenberg. Can’t you just imagine the likes of Drew Droege or Tiffany Haddish narrating this one, while slurring the phrase Office of Strategic Services?
The thing is, The Catcher Was a Spy isn’t as fun as that logline makes it sound. It isn’t what Lewin seems to be going for, despite presence of Ant-Man’s Paul Rudd. Instead, it’s the kind of movie where government operatives like to don herringbone suits and fedoras to conspire in the shadows of shady cobblestone streets. It’s the kind of movie where citrine lamp lights desaturate an already misty night, the same sort of color palette for Fury or Bridge of Spies or The Imitation Game. It’s the kind of movie where an unlikely hero, typically reserved for a Tom Hanks or a Benedict Cumberbatch during awards season, ends up changing the course of history.
Source: IGN.com The Catcher Was a Spy Review