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Film Fare...with Mark Moorehead

 

Miracle

General Audiences:  A

Hockey fans are certain to celebrate one of the greatest moments in sports history with the release of this film. However, it’s also an inspirational Cinderella story that will stir anyone with a heart.  Nothing objectionable.

Family Audiences: A

Rated PG for language. I remember hearing only one off-color word, and it was important to the scene it was used in. Appropriate for children 10 years of age and older. Safer for children than a Super Bowl half-time show. 

 

It was a tough year. Our economy was struggling to pull out of a recession. Americans were held hostage by Islamic extremists. Gas lines and a war that went south were still fresh in our memory. Russia was showing off its might with nuclear testing. And presidential hopefuls were trying to convince us they could rescue us from our despair. The year was 1980. Americans were desperate for something to cheer about.

Enter America’s Olympic hockey team, the biggest underdog in the winter Olympics. This motley crew was the last group anyone expected to shock us out of our collective despondency.  Everything was against them: they were young amateurs and never played together.  There wasn’t much time to train--just nine months before the big day. Even more worrisome: a U.S. Olympic hockey team had hadn’t won a medal since 1960.

The team’s Red Army opponents, on the other hand, were the best in the world--a strong, disciplined, experienced power house that just defeated the National Hockey League All-Stars 6-0. What the American team needed was a miracle and it came in the form of a hard-driving coach named Herb Brooks.

Miracle is really a character study of Brooks (played by Kurt Russell), and in that sense it’s much more than a “Greatest Moments in Sports,” where you know the outcome of the game.

Brooks was one of those charismatic individuals who recognized the importance of changing, adapting and moving forward. He believed that by fusing the Soviet and Canadian styles of hockey and adding some youthful unpredictability, one could defeat the Russians at their own game. His challenge was to convince his 20 charges to think the same and play as a team with one goal in mind.  

As coach, Kurt Russell excels as the emotionally intense and rigorous disciplinarian that Brooks was. Russell captures Brooks’ outwardly controlled behavior toward his players and his inwardly personal struggle with his past and as a husband.

Thankfully, Miracle is no Mighty Ducks or The Rookie with a screaming caricature of a coach, jumping up and down, arms flailing like a wild banshee. Russell intentionally underplays his role in such a way you’re soon convinced he really is a coach and cares a great deal for his boys, but is unable to show his feelings for fear he will lose control and their respect. 

Brooks aptly demonstrates his approach to coaching in his opening remarks to the athletes:

“I’m not your friend. I’m your coach. If you want a friend see Mr. Patrick (the assistant coach played by Noah Emmerich).” 

We see plenty of Kurt Russell in the movie, but not enough of the individual hockey players, and that’s a disappointment. We want to know them better but never do. Fortunately, during the screening of Miracle, I met up with west Chandler resident Bob Cole, a physical education instructor and loyal fan of three particular players on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team (Mark Pavelich, Phil Verchota and John “Bah” Harrington). 

Cole grew up with these guys in Duluth, Minn.  One of them, Pavelich, plays one of the three “Cone Heads” that comprised a “special team” of sorts that menaced the Russian team without mercy.

I asked Cole what he thought of the movie and if the actors portrayed his friends faithfully.

“I thought the movie was excellent,” said Cole. “The hockey play was realistic and well done.

“But some of the famous plays in the game were not given the attention they deserved. The actors did a good job but didn’t have enough time on the screen for us to know more about the players.”

In spite of those objections, Cole said the film brought back good memories; he particularly liked the ending credits that included where-they-are-today biographies for each of the 20 players. 

The breadth of new occupations, from airline pilot to investment broker, is testimony to the late Herb Brooks’ impact on the lives of his famous “miracle team.”

Each of them changed, adapted and moved forward.

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