Sunday, November 28

Do You Believe In Miracles

When the USA won the Olympic Hockey gold medal in 1980, I was pretty much just beginning my anti-USA phase (USA, just get out!!).  Combine that with my philosophy-at-the-time that Canada makes the best hockey players, and if our best were ever allowed to compete, we'd win.   Unsurprisingly, I was less than impressed when they beat the Soviet Union, and to me, back then, the Al Michaels "Do you believe in miracles" cry was just typical American propoganda.  When those gold medalists made it to NHL teams, I was, deep down, hoping they'd fail.  Over the years, my stance hasn't changed much.
24 years later and the movie Miracle gets released by Disney, and I think to myself "here's a crappy, feel good movie I'll never watch."  Well, today I watched it, and I gotta say... pretty good movie, and now that I'm more mature, I can appreciate the effort of coach Herb Brooks.
Kurt Russel plays Brooks (and I think the resemblance to Bobby Orr is phenomenal) as a tough disciplinarian with the It'll-Never-Work! idea to combine the best of the Soviet and Canadian styles to create a hybrid of the two.  Apparently it worked.  I was most impressed with the "playing hockey" scenes.  Was expecting the typical staged moments of "action", but instead was surprised with the success they had in conveying the speed and physicality of the sport.  It looked like the actors actually had some skill.  The movie didn't get bogged down in syrupy sub-plots with the various players, and stuck pretty much to the nuts and bolts of the events.
I give it 7 out of 10.


Wayne said...

Many of us shared the "if our best were ever allowed to compete, we'd win" attitude. Father David Bauer and Bobby macMillian were far from our best, we thought, at that time. For my generation, that great myth was shattered in September, 1972 at the Montreal Forum. 34 seconds after the puck was dropped, Phil Esposito scored, and I proudly proclaimed that 2 goals a minute, for 60 minutes computes to 120-0 for us. And, we actually believed it would happen. Boy, did we ever get a wake-up call at the end of that game! Even bigger moment was Henderson's goal in our den with 6 other guys skipping school from CRHS.
Those days stand out in my memory along with JFK assination, John Lennon's death, rumours of the death of Elvis, Jack's great win in Augusta in '86, and now, sadly, Sept 11th.
Sappy American miricle Hollywood movies are not my favourite, but after your review, I may give it a chance.

Rob MacD said...

The sappiness is, refreshingly, very understated. I was worried that they'd really play up the "1980 Team USA represented Freedom and all that is good" angle, but that was very much held in check.

Wayne said...

To tell you the truth, in '72 it was very much good vs evil, west versus east. Fans at the time did see it as representative of a clash of 2 philosophies, and of course, they (USSR)were the evil ones. Capturing that in film at first may seem pro-american after the fact the US did eventually win, but it probably would be accurate. Todays kids can never experience the feeling of the free world versus something as different as communism, unless martians land tomorrow with their own Victoriavilles. It was the highest form of competition I ever saw. And when the Russians won the first game in Montreal, in our minds, they were even more evil. And many scouts and media had egg on their face. (Me too, for thinking it would be 120-0)
It is hard to explain that we could never at that time imagine it possible that Russians could play in North America. The talk of Tretiac playing for the Habs was beyond comprehension then...even to die hard Bruin fans like me.