Miracle

Year: 2004

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: O'Connor

Review

first some background, in case you’re a sports ignoramus. in 1964, 68, 72 and 76 the USSR hockey team won the gold medal in each year’s olympics. in 1979 (or was it 1980?) they played the nhl all-star team and beat them 6-0. up until the 1980 winter olympics they had been undefeated in the last 40+ games in their various travels around the world (including a win against the very same U.S. team that this story follows). once in the olympics the russians breezed through their first five games going 5-0 and scoring 51 goals (that’s a lot). every expert in the world had them picked as the best team in the world with the best goalie in the world. but then they played a US team whose average player was only 21 years old, and they got beat. anyone who knows anything about the history of the modern olympics ranks the game as one of the top five greatest upsets in modern olympic history. add to that the political climate of the time and you’ve got a pretty great story. what most people don’t know is that as huge as the game was it was only for the silver medal….the US went on to win one more game against finland for the gold medal.

but when you have a story that great there is a tendency for hollywood to fuck things up. here’s a movie that could have so easily been bad…make that awful. it has all the trappings of a bad tv movie. the based on the true story of an american olympic hockey team defying all odds to beat the russian hockey team. there was easily the opportunity for flag waving and slow motion overload, but that stuff really wasn’t there. this is one of the rare times when i thought to myself “this film is really well produced.” i could tell that the producers of this film were committed more to the story than to the bottom line (i.e., profit). examples?…they hired the coach of the 1980 team that the film depicts as a consultant and dedicated it in his honor (he died shortly before the film was completed). i don’t remember seeing any flags waving in the wind. they didn’t hire big name actors to play any of the hockey players. in 1980 the olympics still required amateurs so none of the hockey players on the team were widely known…the same goes for the film. there were only two recognizable faces in the film – kurt russell played the coach (who in real life was the biggest star of the team since he coached a couple ncaa championship teams) and noam emmerich (who really isn’t all that big of an actor) who played an assistant coach. again, if they had done a typical hollywood job on this movie you would have seen guys like josh hartnet or casey affleck or freddie prinze jr. instead the film adopts the philosophy of the team they are praising – it’s more about the whole than it is about the individuals. and i really think that it works. there are some weak moments in the acting here or there (russell is actually very good), but as a whole the acting is sufficient and the story carries whatever weaknesses the film may have elsewhere. the filmmakers (wisely) allow the story to shine on its own. like seabiscuit, the film places the story within its historical context and it does this because the story calls for it. rather than making it into a cold war allegory for the sake of plucking on our sense of patriotism, the film neatly places the story in its appropriate backdrop because it belongs there. it does not make the mistake of simplifying things either – it shows both sides of the cold war – there are those who want our team to beat those commie bastards and there are those who recognize that it’s just a game and basically just wish we could all get along. if the film was made 15 years ago i think it would have been more successful, but it wouldn’t have been as good and mature as it is. i also like the fact that they treated the win against the USSR as the climax of the film despite the fact that it was the next game (against finland) that was for the gold medal. most people might consider a gold medal game as more important, but in reality the silver medal game against the USSR was a bigger upset and more memorable. a very fine film.

Watched in theater