Practitioners throw a quirky pitch of unpredictable trajectory, requiring "the fingertips of a safecracker and the mind of a Zen Buddhist, " says former pitcher Jim Bouton in the film.

WSJ: R.A. Dickey in 'Knuckleball!': Stuck in the Bullpen

An intelligent and rather overcivilized caper movie, set in Montreal, which features three generations of great male actors: Marlon Brando (sounding like his long-ago nemesis Truman Capote) as an upper-class aesthete and fence with exquisite manners, Robert De Niro as a saturnine jazz-club owner and safecracker who never takes risks, and Edward Norton as a brilliant but willful young con man and criminal.

NEWYORKER: The Score