My Review: Sugar (8/10)

¨Do me a favor, don`t give that ball to the first white girl you meet¨

(8/10)This indy film written and directed by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (the team that brought us Half Nelson, which starred Ryan Gosling as a drug addict High school teacher and gave him an Oscar nomination a couple years ago) was a huge suprise for me. I am not a huge baseball fan so I had been putting off this movie for some time, but once I gave it a chance I could not keep my eyes off the screen. To say that this is the best sports movie made in the last 5 years is an understatement becuase this film has much more layers to it than being considered just as a sports movie. The film takes us on a journey from Domincan Republic, to a small farm town in Iowa, and finally to New York City. Sugar will please baseball fans because there is a lot of it, but it will also reach several other groups because the movie tackles such diverse issues as inmigration, life in third world countries compared to life in the States, the pressure of having to take sports enhancing drugs, the dificulties in achieving your dreams, and even the language barrier. I don´t think that there is another movie (besides last year`s The Visitor) that depicts immigration in such a realistic way as this one did. This is probably one of those movies you haven`t heard much of, but need to see. Unfortunately, it has been ignored so far during award season (hopefully it will get some Oscar nods), but it did make AFI`s top ten films of 2009 list.

Newcomer Algenis Perez Soto was great as the lead character Sugar. He created a very likeable character, humble and natural, while at the same time trying to achieve his dreams in order to help out his family back home. The movie begins in an Academy in Dominican Republic where talented players are trained by Kansas City Knights scouts. Sugar is one of many local players who are trained there and they all have the same goal: playing in the major leagues. This first part of the film really gives us a true picture of life in Dominican Republic. We are shown the poverty, but at the same time we experience their warm and happy way of living. The players are not only taught baseball, but english as well (although it is mostly baseball terms because later on in the film we find out they can`t even order eggs at a restaurant). The second part of the film takes place in Iowa where Sugar is drafted to play for a division A team and he lives with an old couple (Ann Whitney and Richard Bull) at a farm and befriends their granddaughter Anne (Ellary Porterfield). Sugar feels kind of lost at first because he is in an all white state with very few spanish speaking people, but he does have the company of his fellow Dominican teammate Jorge Ramirez (Rayniel Rufino) who gives him a couple of tips. I do not want to give any more of the plot away, from this point on Sugar will have to deal with all these preassures in order to achieve his goals. The third part of the film takes place in New York and is perhaps the best part of the film.

Sugar is much more than a baseball movie and this is one you have to check out even if you`re not a baseball fan. Just like the Puerto Rican carpenter who tells Sugar he doesn`t like baseball because it is a slow sport but ends up going to see him play a ball game, the same thing happens to us with this movie despite being a fan or not of the game becuase there is much more to Sugar than baseball. This movie really depicts the game, cultural differences, and immigration in a very realistic way. It doesn`t follow the typical sport movie formula and it really took me places I didn`t think this movie was going to go. It was really a suprise for me and a very pleasant journey from Domincan Republic to New York City and everything inbetween. Sugar is among the best of the year. The writers did a great job at telling a good story!