Million Dollar Arm

"How fast do they pitch in cricket? [pause] Fine, bowl. How fast do they bowl in cricket?"

In 2008, J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) and his business partner Ash Vasudevan (Mandvi) are struggling.  They are successful sports agents, but most of their clients have retired and young new players are being snatched by larger companies.  After losing their last hope to a big company, they are scrambling for another solution.  J.B. gets the idea to go to India and turn a cricket player into the next baseball player.  They team with Mr. Chang (Ma), a wealthy business man, to create a competition called the Million Dollar Arm.  J.B. takes retired scout Ray (Arkin) and goes to India to start the search.

At the end of the competition, Rinku (Sharma) and Dinesh (Mittal) are named the winners, and travel back to Los Angeles.  Amit Rohan (Pitobash), a huge baseball fan, comes along to serve as the translator and to learn about coaching.  J.B. and his team have a short amount of time to turn Rinku and Dinesh into baseball players in time for their MLB tryouts.


This film is based on the real story of MLB players Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel.  They were the winners of the Million Dollar Arm competition and were brought to the University of Southern California (USC).  In 2008, while they were training at USC they were filmed by Neil and Michael Mandt.  That footage was used to help garner interest in the film.  Sony Pictures purchased the screen rights to their life story.

This film succeeds because they made excellent casting decisions.  Jon Hamm is charismatic on screen.  He is good, even when you don't like the character, you still want to root for him.  Suraj Sharma and Madhur Mittal are adorable.  They are endearing actors and easy to empathize with them.  Pitobash is funny and entertaining as Amit.  They are great together.  Lake Bell is not my favorite actress, but I like her here.

It is a typical sports movie, but still a powerful story.

Million Dollar Arm (2014) 124 minutes
Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Jon Hamm as J.B. Bernstein
Aasif Mandvi as Ash Vasudevan
Suraj Sharma as Rinku Singh
Madhur Mittal as Dinesh Patel
Bill Paxton as Tom House
Lake Bell as Brenda Fenwick
Alan Arkin as Ray Poitevint
Pitobash as Amit Rohan
Allyn Rachel as Theresa
Darshan Jariwala as Vivek
Tzi Ma as Will Chang