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Miracle review
2004.03.01 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
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Kurt Russell coaxes a miracle out of his players. [official site] |
Americans are not, by and large, hockey fans. It's disingenuous of us to pretend that we love hockey even for a couple of hours. What happened at Lake Placid in 1980 wasn't meaningful in a sports sense; it was political. And it wasn't so much a miracle as it was a fluke. The Russians know it; the Finns know it; the Canadians certainly know it; and—deep down—we know it too.
In a way, it's too bad. It's kind of nice that America isn't the best at everything. We stink at soccer, for example, and several Olympic sports don't interest us at all. In the lead up to the 1980 games, we were leading the world in an economic slump. Director Gavin O'Connor does a good job of reminding us of that in his opening; peppering us with news reports about gas shortages and nuclear paralysis. We're relieved when the simple sports story begins.
The sad thing about sports stories, even Olympic sports stories, is that every game has a winner and a loser; and they're usually both good guys. For every come-from-behind win there is an equal and opposite squander-the-lead loss. The only way to make a sports story work in a movie (or anywhere else) is to cast the favorite as a team full of jerks, managed by jerks, with fans who are jerks.
For Miracle, that's easier than usual. The Soviets had been bogeymen for Americans and Europeans for decades. The politics of the time were coming to another climax and the Soviet Olympic teams, especially the hockey team, were the best in the world. Of course, it helps that the eastern block competitors labored under the taint of suspected steroid use. That made it easier to think of them as jerks.
Kurt Russell (in a pretty good Minnesota accent) plays Herb Brooks, a college hockey coach and one-time Olympic hopeful himself. He wants to change the way the American Olympic team trains and plays, forging a team out of regular guys he believes in instead of young mavericks with more talent than humility. The movie is all about Brooks and his driving ambition. The players, his assistant coach (Noah Emmerich), his wife (Patricia Clarkson), and his kids—they're all window dressing. We hardly get to know them and certainly don't get to know the sponsors or opponents.
I was hoping to see something more of Brooks' study of the Soviet style of play. Much was made of the long string of victories they had amassed and the decade that some of them had played together. We never see Brooks encouraging his players by telling them that the Soviets may still be great but are getting old and complacent. Instead, in spite of the way that Brooks touts team strategy over individual skill, we see only his encouragement of individual skill. He puts his players thru relentless conditioning drills; he pushes his goalie to focus; he taunts an injured player to play thru the pain. Where is the strategy?
The stoic, robotic Soviets play their part with the right blend of pride and menace—not quite becoming monstrous parodies of the real men, but coming close. There is a moment, tho, when Brooks and his team realize that they have hurt the Soviets' confidence. It is subtle, but Russell underscores it with a simple line, delivered in a sort of secretive growl: "We can beat these guys!"
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[Brooks is] as astonished as anyone when the winds shift their way. That moment, and the win that follows, makes Miracle a success. |
It is made clear that Brooks did not harbor much hope for his team. He's as astonished as anyone when the winds shift their way. That moment, and the win that follows, makes Miracle a success. It's not the traditional sports story of talented misfits who believe in themselves; it is the story of regular guys who love to play the game and the fluke they find themselves involved in.
The movie lets us down a bit by forgetting that the Soviets were only the stepping stone to the gold. The team still had to finish the medal round and beat Finland for the top honors. This game is given the slightest of treatments, but by then the movie has already worn us out, and we're happy to fast forward to the team crowding the winner's stand.
The 1980 Olympics "miracle on ice" isn't the greatest
moment in sports history, as some of the advertising hypes, but it's a
genuine moment of American pride in a time of doubt. It's good for us
to keep in mind that we're not always the favorite and we're not the best
at everything... but if we give it a shot, we just may luck out anyway.
f e e d b a c k
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