'Sugar' is bittersweet and best off the ball field
Sugar
Running
time:
114 minutes
MPAA rating:R (profanity, adult situations, drugs)
On the Web
More a tale of immigration and coming-of-age than a baseball drama, "Sugar" reaches its most compelling dramatic sweetness off the baseball field.
The filmmaking team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who penned the script for Ryan Gosling's breakthrough drama "Half Nelson," take charge of direction as well in this truthful portrayal of the quest for fame and fortune.
In this case, however, the lead character's ability to play with the big boys in the U.S. minor leagues amounts to more than merely making a baseball team.
Miguel "Sugar" Santos (newcomer Algenis Pérez Soto), a promising pitcher from a small Dominican Republic village, has more riding on his career than, say, some middle-class kid from El Norte with a flame-thrower arm might.
"Sugar," in Spanish and English with some subtitles, made me think of "El Norte" (1983). Both investigate the human issues of immigration from an alien's perspective as a central theme.
Gregory Nava's moving tale of Mayan Indian peasants who arrive in Los Angeles and try to scrape out a living involved a sister who worked as a maid and her brother. He cut grass.
Sugar, portrayed with an excellent balance of false bravado and desperation by first-time actor Soto, arrives at the fictional Kansas City Knights spring training camp in Arizona on a visa.
From the moment he walks out onto the manicured field, Sugar discovers that everyone in camp was a phenom where they came from. The clock is ticking both on Sugar's visa and his fragile psyche.
I don't recommend this drama based on the baseball playing alone. Soto, who played ball in his native Dominican Republic (as an infielder), never made the cut to attend the same baseball academy grooming camp that serves as a springboard to the U.S. for his character.
Anyone who follows baseball will notice that the ball never arrives at the plate with the zip gifted minor league achieve.
Yet off the field, "Sugar" impresses with solid acting, some beautiful scenery and an honest story arc rarely dared in narrative feature films.
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