Starring Algenis Perez Soto
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
This flick started out as a very straightforward by-the-books baseball movie in the vein of The Rookie -- guy from the Dominican Republic pitches pretty well, gets picked up by the Kansas City Chiefs (I think that's what the team was called), plays for a bit, runs into some trouble in terms of not pitching as well as he should be, doubts himself, then has a comeback of sorts. Everything happened except that last thing, which, in some respects is a good thing...the filmmakers decided to do something different instead of the "happy" typical baseball movie ending. The unfortunate thing is that this film's final act is completely and utterly pointless, adds nothing to the flick, and runs on for much too long.
Algenis Perez Soto as the title character was actually decent, thankfully. Considering that he's never been in a single other thing, I was actually somewhat impressed. Now, he didn't wow me and it certainly wasn't anything to overly praise, but he at least kept my attention for two hours.
The directors (who were also the writers) were fairly unimpressive, throwing in a couple shots just to shout "Hey! Look at us! We can do cool shots like this! We've got talent!" In particular, there was a long tracking shot that simply followed Sugar as he walked through some casino-type fun center...it was a shot of his back for what felt like an eternity and then, when he finally got where he was going, the shot switched to something else. Nothing like looking at someone's back for 45 seconds. This shot stood out like a sore thumb.
So far, at this point, the Newark Film Festival is 0 for 2 when it comes to "narrative" films...True, I've already seen Moon and In the Loop which are also showing there, but as of now, the documentaries are infinitely more enjoyable.
The RyMickey Rating: D
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