Movie Review: Million Dollar Arm
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
The film Million Dollar Arm is a family-friendly drama that is based on the real-life story of the first Indian athletes to become involved with any major American sports franchise. The film was directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Tom McCarthy. Neither gentleman has a huge list of credits to their respective professions but what they do have is largely decent quality and have latched onto a real sports underdog story here that is produced by Disney.
The story involves a down and out sports agent, J. B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm), who gets the desperate yet brilliant idea to go to India and scout for pitching prospects. The plan is to develop the winners of a pitching contest/reality show, called Million Dollar Arm, and sign them for a Major League Baseball deal. JB and his junior partner Ash (Aasif Mandvi) flesh out their plan by securing the financing they need and then recruiting a retired MLB scout Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin) and a pitching coach Tom House (Bill Paxton). Meanwhile, the romantic sub-plot between JB and Brenda (Lake Bell) begins via Skype.
Once JB gets to India, he travels from city to city and village to village holding audition rounds of the contest. Among the group of viable contestants, he discovers two that become central to the story. The two Indians that stand out in the group of contestants are Rinku Singh (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Madhur Mittel). The story structure here is admirable. We see Jon Hamm’s character as a fish out of water in India. Then when the story moves back to Los Angeles, the contest winners, who are only teenagers at this point and who have never even seen an elevator much less an American city, are the ones who become the strangers in a strange land. Bonding, even thru a language and cultural barrier, is inevitable. JB resists this of course. Events transpire where JB ends up taking the teenagers into his own home. This means that not only can the romantic sub-plot start to heat up but that the boys finally get to meet Brenda. Slowly a quasi-family unit starts to form. The big question now is can the young men really pitch?
Additionally, will JB the deal-maker decide to keep putting the business deal at hand above being a true advocate for his young charges best interests? The film is very much about the transformation of these two young athletes. However, it is just as much about the emotional and moral journey of JB. There is more than a bit of Jerry Maguire (1996) in this film as both stories deal with the morality of a sports agent who must make hard choices.
The training that the boys go through is a typical montage that isn’t particularly new but does provide some comic relief. The boys are going through a great deal at this point in the film and it is incredibly fortunate that they have each other to lean on during their struggles with language, culture, baseball rules, and the simple longing for home and family. Both Sharma and Mittel shine best in the scenes they play together.
Jon Hamm, Madhur Mittal, Pitobash. and Suraj Sharma in “Million Dollar Arm.” Photo by John Johnson – © 2013 – Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This timely entry into your local multiplex has been Disney-fied a bit. But the basic facts of the story though are incredible enough that there is no great need to fancy them up much. The filmmakers do a mostly decent job of restraining that impulse.
The overall cast here is superb. Jon Hamm plays a charming jerk. Alan Arkin is a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon. Lake Bell is not just a gal in skimpy clothes here and provides emotional depth that Hamm’s JB clearly needs. Bill Paxton just rules. I have never seen a bad Paxton performance. Have you?
The only true downside to Million Dollar Arm was the predictable nature of this sort of tale. It is a sports underdog story. That being said, there is still value in a film that attempts to convey the inspirational. Sports are all about learning teamwork and self-improvement. Film is about reflection on shared truths. So, any sports film that shows us that dreams can come true without promising that they always will come true has a shot.
Steven Gahm
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