Sugar

It bears mentioning early on that despite the apparent promise of another rags-to-riches baseball epic offered by the promotional artwork, Sugar is not really what it appears to be. Yes, there is a lot of baseball going on here, though all of the action takes place either deep down in the small-town level of single-A ball or in offshore baseball academies, which is where we first meet Miguel Santos (nicknamed Sugar because "he's sweet with the ladies").

The early scenes of Sugar are set in a guarded academy in the Dominican Republic, and it is fascinating to watch as groups of talented local teenagers are slowly, methodically shaped into prospects, learning basic English baseball terminology and refining their game under the watchful eyes of coaches and major league scouts. If these prospects perform well enough, they are called up to the U.S. minor leagues where the promise of a career in the majors (and a steady stream of money to send back home) is what drives them to succeed. Should they fail to perform to expectations, however, everyone knows they can be replaced by additional prospects waiting their turn, just as they once were. Watching these scenes, you realize that success in the major leagues on any kind of level is all chance, luck and skill ... and sometimes even the brightest young stars don't have what it takes to advance.

After earning a spot in the Kansas City organization, Sugar is quickly shunted off to pitch at the team's A-level minor league affiliate in Bridgetown, Iowa. Going to spring-training camp in Arizona at least offered a large population of Hispanic people for Sugar to identify with, confide with, and most importantly communicate with. Iowa, on the other hand, might as well be Mars in comparison, and it is there, with Sugar's lifelong ambition finally within his grasp, that his alienation and solitude force the young pitcher to question what drives him in the first place.

Without going into too much plot detail, I watched this movie fully expecting one story arc and was quite surprised when events suddenly veered off in a very different direction: the last third of this movie almost feels like you changed the channel to something else entirely and only at the very end do we get a sense of appropriate closure. What keeps us involved during this transition is the affecting performance by unknown Dominican actor Algenis Perez Soto. Sugar is Soto's very first acting role, and it's striking how believable and natural he comes across to us, both at home in San Pedro, where he is confident and charming, and in the middle of Iowa where he is more tentative, frustrated, and eventually afraid. It's crucial that we believe in Soto's character, because Sugar's sense of loneliness in the middle of a foreign country is the real point of this movie: the quiet, tight-knit, slum-like conditions of Sugar's home and the almost military-school like regimen of the baseball academy can never adequately prepare him or his classmates for Wal-Marts, all-night restaurants, mini wet bars and satellite porn-on-demand.

Sugar rating: 4/5