Sugar (2009)

The American Film Institute picked this film as part of its top 10 from 2009 and ESPN nominated it for the ESPY for Best Sports Film of the Year. It lost to The Express a film I intend to watch later this year, but fully expect this only lost because no one knew much about it.

It strikes me as odd that this was selected as an American film, the majority of the film is in Spanish. This is a technical issue though, the majority of the run time was in Spanish, but the majority of the dialogue was in English.

So the film is about a young man in a Dominican Republic training camp where MLB scouts look for young talent to bring to the States. The camp teaches them discipline, fundamentals, and baseball terms in English. So several boys are called up to the Kansas City training camp in Phoenix, after the training camp our main character is called up to single "A" ball. As a young pitcher in the middle of nowhere Iowa with very limited English and far from home he struggles to get along with the coaching staff and the family he is staying with.

I was very surprised at how good this film was, there are no star characters, and the film is not exactly quickly paced. Nonetheless, it is a film worth watching, then again I like a good sports film.

Vote: 8/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0990413/

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