Million Dollar Arm (2014)
Directed by Craig Gillespie
In a last-ditch effort to save his career, sports agent JB Bernstein dreams up a wild game plan to find Major League Baseball’s next great pitcher from a pool of cricket players in India. He soon discovers two young men who can throw a fastball but know nothing about the game of baseball. Or America. It’s an incredible and touching journey that will change them all — especially JB, who learns valuable lessons about teamwork, commitment and family.
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What critics compared Million Dollar Arm to
The plot suggests an intriguing triple play that combines the outside-of-box thinking of " Moneyball ," the can-do gumption of " Jerry Maguire " and the mass-of-humanity chaos of " Slumdog Millionaire " underscored with music by the Oscar-winning A.R. Rahman.
While these films have classically been about the coaches and the players, the last few years have shown us an interesting shift, with films like Bennett Miller’s Moneyball and Ivan Reitman’s Draft Day instead putting the spotlight on the men in suits who view sports more from a business perspective than an athletic one.
With a focus on the business end of things, Million Dollar Arm plays more like 2012?s Moneyball , but with half the budget and so better chance for a higher profit margin.
It’s not as if Hollywood executives fail to grasp that exceptions like “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side” were hits precisely because they didn’t feel like “sports movies,” because you didn’t have to know or care about on-base-plus-slugging or Texas high school football to follow the story.
This Disney attempt to put an international spin on “Moneyball” delivers only the basics in a plot that needs details.
I prefer sports movies with more sass and snap, like the films Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”) used to make, or even parts of “Moneyball.”
A few fine actors, such as Aaron Taylor-Johnson ("Nowhere Boy," "Kick-Ass"), sporting a perfect American accent and playing heroic soldier while trying to get home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and their little boy, help add some real story to the mix, too.
I was impressed with Cruella ’s visual onslaught, director Craig Gillespie (whose diverse filmography includes I, Tonya , Million Dollar Arm and Lars and the Real Girl ) creatively rendering a world on the verge of a cultural shift; one might say Cruella helped usher in the punk era, in this reality anyway.
After two stints working with Disney ( Million Dollar Arm and the refreshing traditionalist thriller The Finest Hour ), Gillespie playfully lets loose within his newfound carte blanche.
But before that Gillespie had already worked with Disney on the very PG “Million Dollar Arm.”