Monday

Sugar is difficult viewing. It's the second film from writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (the first being Half Nelson). It follows the story of Sugar, a baseball pitcher from the Dominican Republic who trains at one of the Major League academies in his own country, before being signed to play for several Minor League teams in America. He takes this as his big break, and initially is very impressive, before injury, language and cultural problems start to intrude, and he soon realises he doesn't have the ability or the perseverance to make it to the top. This is the difficult aspect I mentioned. It's hard to see someone fail. We are used to seeing people succeed in movies, especially sport's ones. The film portrays this sensitively and intelligently, but it does inevitably rely on some sport's movie cliches (the commentator telling us what's happening etc), which is a bit disappointing. However, I found another issue interesting. The directors say (in an interview accompanying the DVD) that they tried to highlight how Major League teams take these young men from the Dominican Republic, exploit them for their talent, and then dump them if they're no good. Yet isn't this exactly what the directors have done with their lead actor, Algenis Perez Soto, an otherwise unknown baseball player from the country? I don't know.