Al's Omniflick: Million Dollar Arm

Friday, May 23, 2014

Million Dollar Arm

*Spoiler Alert**

Director: Craig Gillespie, Starring: Jon Hamm, Alan Arkin, Bill Paxton, Lake Bell, Aasif Mandvi, Suraj Sharma

Based on relatively recent events, Million Dollar Arm tells the story of a sports agent named JB (John Hamm), whose agency has seen better days and better clients. JB has just lost a potentially lucrative client; a top NFL linebacker, to a rival agency. Lacking other prospects to represent, JB hatches a scheme to find and train Indian cricket bowlers to become Major League Baseball pitching hopefuls. With the help of a very powerful and wealthy investor, JB, an Indian-American associate named Aash (Aasif Mandvi) and Ray (Alan Arkin), a retired scout whose skepticism is worn on his sleeve, fly to India; their success far from guaranteed.

To facilitate his plan JB creates a show called Million Dollar Arm, where contestants compete by demonstrating powerful arms and fast pitches. The winners are given the chance to travel to America to train and try-out for a spot on a Major League Baseball roster.

JB is courted aggressively by a short, gregarious Indian man named Amit (Pitobash), who claims to be a big baseball fan, though his knowledge of the game is sketchy at best. Offering his services for free, JB takes him on as an assistant and before long, both men and newly arrived Ray begin holding try-outs on the travelling show.

The contestants are a disappointing lot at first; most and almost all demonstrating feeble arm strength. But after a tour of a few cities, JB manages to find a few strong candidates; one of them with a comically unorthodox pitching stance. Ultimately, two winners emerge; Rinku (Life of Pi's Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (Madhur Mittal).

In scenes sure to stimulate the tear ducts, Rinku and Dinesh say goodbye to their respective families. Rinku's mother asks JB (via Amit's interpretation) to look out for her son, a promise he intends to keep.

Dinesh, Rinku and Amit manage to create trouble for themselves in America when they accidentally set off a fire alarm in their hotel, earning them an ejection from the the place. Unable to place them elsewhere, JB reluctantly takes them into his own home.

The three Indian men find life in JB's home perplexing and the pace hectic. They inquire about his family; an issue JB is only happily to dismiss as something foreign to his bachelor lifestyle. They also find JB's hurry-up, time-management skills more than a little off-putting.
JB makes a deal with a USC baseball coach, Tom House (Bill Paxton)--renowned for his whiz-bang talent for developing pitchers--to bring the two prospects to Major League readiness in a year's time. The time-table is an unreasonable condition imposed by the investor; one both House and JB warily acknowledge.

Dinesh and Rinku find pitching rough-going and show little flair for the finer points but House informs JB that though the two young men have their rough edges, they show determination and genuine ability.

JB meanwhile is ever-menaced by his business' near-insolvency; clients demonstrably lacking. He also begins to put his business pursuits ahead of his relationship with Dinesh and Rinku, who he often neglects. The men find a sympathetic spirit in JB's tenant Brenda (Lake Bell), who is quick to identify the boy's troubles as a lack of care on JB's part; which he begins slowly to address. But later, JB's business and marketing concerns get the better of him as Dinesh and Rinku fail a critical try-out before Major League Scouts. Thinking himself finished, he comes to realize how badly he mistreated both men and Amit, not to mention his prospect-for-love Brenda. Ever tenacious, JB risks everything to give the two Indian pitchers a second try-out in more favorable conditions. Finding no takers and no further financial investment, he manages to find one scout who will give Dinesh and Rinku another shot.

Is Million Dollar Arm formulaic? Definitely. Is it sentimental? You bet. But it also has charm by the ton, which the cast deftly provides. The scenes with Sharma, Pitobash, Mittal and Hamm generate warmth and on-screen chemistry while Lake Bell's quirky sexyness and humor bring a much-needed dose of estrogen to the proceedings. Hamm and Bell are an unlikely pairing but they spark together. Alan Arkin is always fun, and is again as JB's curmudgeonly foil. And for what little time Bill Paxton is on-screen, he makes up for as a very convincing coach who provides compassionate, fatherly guidance to Dinesh and Rinkure as the pressure to succeed mounts.

Is this stellar film-making? This is Disney. Take that how you will. But I must say I had more fun and found more humanity in Million Dollar Arm than the two-hour, insufferable carnage carnival known as Godzilla. The latter gleefully disposes of humans while the former at least reminds us people still populate the planet, and sometimes in funny, touching ways.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.