Shrewdly taking a micro rather than macro approach to its socio-political issues, Sugar recounts a Dominican Republic pitching prospect’s attempts to make it in the big leagues without resorting to the type of clunky, moralizing commentary that its fish-out-of-water story could easily have indulged in. Exhibiting more delicacy and restraint than their prior Half Nelson, writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck refuse to turn the saga of Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) into an overarching parable about the immigrant experience, American intolerance, or any of the other big-picture issues that it naturally grazes. Any larger implications are allowed to resound only in the context of Sugar’s specific experiences transitioning from the D.R. to the alien milieu of Bridgetown, Iowa and the Single-A minor league squad that gives him his shot. When Sugar and his Latino teammates get into a scuffle with local white men unhappy about the foreigners dancing with blonde women, the incident may reflect ingrained societal intolerance but, shot with impressive understatement, resonates primarily as an example of Sugar’s estrangement from his environment. And when Sugar watches a TV broadcast of Hurricane Katrina refugees praying in the Superdome, the moment doesn’t conflate Sugar and African-Americans’ plights so much as further hammer home his ignorance about, and disconnection from, his bewildering, racially charged, devoutly religious surroundings.
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