Movie Review:

Miracle

    It's hard to make a sports movie based on a true story.  "Sports movie" is already one of the most clichéd genres out there, with about 99 out of every 100 having a feel-good ending.  Taking a true story where the only way you could not know the ending is to have been born after 1975 and never paid even the slightest attention to sports only invites problems.

    Fortunately, Miracle avoids most of them.  Though not without cliché moments, the latest offering from Disney - suddenly the studio of the feel-good sports true story - is a fun retelling of the story surrounding a game that anyone over the age of 30, sports fan or no, is likely to remember.

    Miracle starts by framing itself in the context of the time.  The opening credits play over a montage of the 1970s, essentially to show those too young to remember how lousy a decade it had been in many ways, especially politically.  Later in the film, characters are shown reacting to the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as sitting in long lines at the gas station.

    Meanwhile, Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) successfully convinces USA Hockey that he's the right man to lead a team of amateurs to the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid.  Brooks is confident, developing a style that he feels can beat the Soviet Union, the best team in the world, at their own game.  Brooks' system involved far more practice time than Olympic teams of the past had used - but Olympic teams of the past hadn't won anything since 1960, and USA Hockey was willing to give Brooks a shot.

    The film spends most of its time showing the evolution of the team, focusing only the last 15 or 20 minutes of a movie that passes two hours in length on the game with the USSR (not the gold medal game, as is sometimes mistakenly believed, but the filmmakers can be excused for relegating the Finland contest, a dramatic afterthought, to an epilogue).  It is, of course, difficult to have 20 characters, so a few are concentrated on: temperamental but talented goalie Jim Craig, team captain Mike Eruzione, and defenseman Jack O'Callahan in particular.  Other players, like Rob McClanahan and the "Conehead line" of John Harrington, Mark Pavelich, and Buzz Schneider, get some face time but little development (well, no one, save maybe Craig, gets too much personal development, but that's just going to happen), while at least a quarter of the squad is almost totally ignored.  This is the sort of thing that could easily not work, but there's never really a problem.

    That's probably because this is Brooks' movie.  He carries the film from start to finish, from matter-of-fact, all-business demeanor as he sells himself to USA Hockey, to steely-eyed, hard-driving determination to mold his players into a team, to his inspirational speech before the USSR game (only slightly changed from real life - in real life he read off an index card, but that's not very cinematic), to his final, private moment of euphoria after the 4-3 win over the Soviets.  Whoever played Brooks had to run the gamut, and Kurt Russell is the perfect choice.  Russell makes the role his own and does everything he can with it - this isn't a character-driven film, so that's only so much, but he performs to the best of his abilities, and he's fun to watch.

    The sports scenes are fun to watch too.  Most of the actors playing USA team members were former hockey players (many making their film debut), and it shows in the realistic feel the hockey scenes have, from practice right through the final game.

    The film only has a couple problems.  The first is minor - at the end, some of the Russians can be seen wearing the knowing smile that too often turns up in film, especially sports movies, that says "We deserved to get beaten, because we're the bad guys."  It always leaps out at me as unrealistic - how many competitors smile after losing - and is especially corny here because so much is made of how the Russians never smile, as part of their intimidation factor.  This ranks right up there with the Russian crowd cheering on Rocky in Rocky IV as "silly sports movie developments featuring Communists."  It's particularly disappointing because apart from this, the film never makes the mistake of getting too jingoistic.

    The other problem is that there are not as many "chill scenes," the barometer by which all sports movies are measured, as there should be.  Eruzione's winning goal and Al Michaels' "Do you believe in miracles?" call each pass, but somehow, the tying goal against Sweden and Mark Johnson's goal with one second left in the first period against the Soviets come up short, and they should have been there.  It would have been a more exciting film had those scenes reached potential.  (It's ironic that the two scenes that produce goosebumps are the two that everyone remembers and is waiting for, as opposed to similarly dramatic goals that would be a little more unexpected to most viewers.)

    These are, despite all the words I just devoted to them, fairly minor complaints.  While it cannot always stay out of the realm of cliché, Miracle does a mostly commendable job of avoiding it, or at least never making it look bad.  Russell's lead performance is great, and the hockey looks good, if occasionally choppy in the way it's edited together.  (Eruzione's goal, even though it produces the chills, is cut a tad clumsily, as are a handful of other on-the-ice scenes.)  The film as a whole is better edited, with little filler and a good pace.  Overall, the film is solid entertainment and not even that bad as a historical text.

    Miracle is not a perfect sports film, but it gets the job done.  A-

Miracle is a Walt Disney Pictures release.  Rated for language and some rough sports action.