Do you believe in miracles?
Guardian
For sports fans, a miracle would be if Disney, for once, didn’t screw up a sports movie with over-the-top cliches and irritating attempts at humorous dialogue. “”Miracle,”” the story of the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, provides technically realistic hockey scenes and portrays the true passion required for probably the greatest sports upset of the 20th century.
Kurt Russell (“”Tombstone,”” “”Escape from New York””) gives a stirring performance as Herb Brooks, the college hockey coach hired to lead Team USA at the ’80 Lake Placid games without embarrassing the team and nation on the world stage. Brooks assembles a unit of ragtag players and unrelentingly molds them into a swift-skating, tough-as-nails squad over the six months leading up to the Olympics. The culmination of the team’s success takes place in the medal round as Team USA defeats the Soviet Union (the past winners of four hockey gold medals) in a game known as “”the Miracle on Ice.””
Throughout Brooks’ odyssey for redemption (as a player he was cut from the gold medal-winning 1960 team just before the Winter Games), he remains undaunted in his quest ó but often at the expense of his family and his players’ spirits. “”Miracle”” is more or less a story of Brooks’ own drive for glory while the rest of the cast is portrayed as on-and-off believers at various points in the film. One gripe may be that the film is too much “”The Herb Brooks Story”” and not enough about the roustabouts who actually labored for the gold.
The filmmakers’ efforts to recreate the ambiance of America’s deflated morale is first revealed in the opening montage with archival news footage surrounding the weaker moments endured by the United States in the mid-to-late 1970s: Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, rising inflation, Cold War tensions and a gas shortage. To understand the significance of the U.S. hockey victory over the Soviet Union, other than the obvious point that the Americans were brutally overmatched on the ice, the American woes of the time needed to be depicted.
Unlike most Disney sports films, the cheesiest thing about “”Miracle”” was Brooks’ loud-and-proud wardrobe. The story seems too good to be true, but the facts do check out: The U.S. did score a last-minute goal in its opening game with Sweden to secure a crucial tie; Team USA’s Mark Johnson did score on a buzzer-beating, momentum-lifting slap shot in the opening period of the Soviet Union game; and mainstream America did not give a puck about hockey before this game, only to draw true inspiration from the victory. The action shots are first-rate. Credit director Gavin O’Connor for hiring hockey players to fill the film’s team and not actors and body doubles. Both O’Connor and Brooks knew what was needed for success; not the best men, but the right ones.
