Ball of Wax is a quite accomplished, incredibly provocative drama that drains all the mythos and majesty out of your typical sports film, only to replace it with vitriol, vice, and a clear sense of cinematic vision. Noting that all professional athletic entertainments are filled with less than virtuous villains (and some antiseptic, amoral wimps as well), filmmaker Daniel Kraus has crafted something quite unusual for a low budget exercise—a small film that plays like a big time major studio effort, albeit one with a lot more balls and bravado than what Tinseltown can concoct.

Sports films always seem to cover the same ground: underdogs versus arrogant champions, unlikely teammates overcoming racism, beloved player facing a disease with only five games left to live, etc. By the end of the first scene, you’ve mentally connected the dots to the film’s obvious conclusion. It starts off with what looks like a group of baseball players triumphantly returning back to their locker room after a big win. Momentarily, I felt this was going to be old hat. However, before the credits even begin, you’ve been thrown a curve.

Barry Bonds may be an egomaniacal jerk. Still, he's no Bret Packard. As Packard, one of baseball's most adored and successful players, approaches the mark for most consecutive games, he's hatched a twisted plot to utilize his teammates as pawns in a depraved game of control. The very fabric of our national pasttime is stretched taut. Its future rests on Packard's whims.

A guy in Wilmington [North Carolina] named Dan Kraus, asked me to do it. I've always been pretty skeptical because most times when you get offers for that kind of thing, they show you scripts. And I find the scripts hard to read, in the sense that you can have a script but not know who's going to be [speaking the lines], or how they're going to say them. It's one thing if you've got Samuel L. Jackson, but if you've got some average Joe saying them it doesn't always work. It just seems awkward. But this time, he had the movie already shot, so I could see it, which was a better place in the process for me to get involved, and get a sense of where I wanted to go.

encore: Now this is a baseball movie. Your actors are NOT baseball players...how did you deal with that?
DK: I learned a hard lesson with "Ball of Wax" — just because you have a group of 20 and 30-something guys with athletic builds, it does NOT guarantee they can play baseball. What happened to the days when you couldn’t grow up without learning how to throw a slider? Anyway, the professionals at the Wilmington Baseball Academy graciously donated their time and efforts to whip our Bad News Bears into shape. And although we were never very good, I think we just barely pulled off major league baseball. But I could be deluding my-self.