Movie Review: Miracle

Though it opens tomorrow, I was able to catch a special, private screening last week. (Before I begin, I must state for the record that I am too young to have any recollection of the events that were dramatized). Rated PG and starring Kurt Russell as the now deceased head coach Herb Brooks (in whose memory the move is dedicated), the film does a fantastic job of two things: capturing the mood of the nation -- including a fantastic quote from then-President Jimmy Carter, and staging the action on the ice. The opening credits run over a montage of images and sounds that are a compendium of events from the 1970s. Included are Watergate -- and President Nixon’s subsequent resignation, hostages being held in Iran, the Energy Crisis, and the evacuation of the American Embassy in Saigon. The credits end with Carter saying that Americans were experiencing a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will." For someone like me who has only read about these events in history books, this quote was really what brought things home. I apologize for the cliché, but looking at each of these events on an individual basis only gives you part of the picture; when you factor in all of the events together, you begin to realize that America wasn’t such a great place all the time (not that today is any indication, either). Americans were ripe for some person, event, or cause they could unify themselves behind that would make them remember again what it was like to live in the greatest country in the world. And while the movie doesn’t focus entirely on this theme, it is time well spent that sets up what is to follow. Quick -- name 5 hockey-themed movies. That’s what I thought. If all you could come up with were Youngblood, Mystery, Alaska, the Mighty Ducks series and the seminal Slap Shot, then you haven’t seen real hockey on film. Hockey is the quickest and most fluid sport there is, where anything can happen at anytime. To watch a hockey game requires your constant attention. A seemingly innocent 3-on-3 rush up the ice can immediately result in a turnover, sending a player on a breakaway. And while the game has evolved in the 24 years since those 1980 Olympics, most obviously in goaltender technique, the basics are still the same -- skate, pass and shoot. Cinematographer Dan Stoloff, who has his cameras follow the players and the puck around the rink at breakneck speed, captures these basics effortlessly. The only “star” of the film is Russell, who does perhaps the best acting of his career. Clad in awful clothes and topped with an even worse haircut, Russell plays Brooks exactly the way Brooks was -- gruff, determined, intense, and stoically passionate. The film -- which sags a bit at times, crushed under the weight of its own story -- is chock full of your usual sports movie clichés -- a coach pushing his players too far, rivals thrown together on the same team who eventually bond into friends, the players becoming a “team,” etc. I submit, however, that you should not hold this against the film. After all, clichés are based on truth and this is the dramatized version of a true story. To borrow from "Entertainment Weekly," I give Miracle a B+, and encourage you to see it -- because you like Kurt Russell, because you like hockey, because you want to introduce your children to the greatest of games, or because you want to remember what it was like to feel good about your country.