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By David DiCerto
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- Dreams come true in "Miracle" (Disney), a star-spangled crowd-pleaser that tells the real-life Cinderella story of the U.S. Olympic hockey team's against-all-odds victory over their much-vaunted Soviet rivals at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. Director Gavin O'Connor scores a cinematic hat trick, with good writing, good acting and good direction, resulting in a movie sure to take home box-office gold.
The film -- "Rocky" on ice -- is, like hockey itself, divided into three periods. First, viewers are introduced to Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), the University of Minnesota hockey coach hired by the U.S. Olympic Committee to put a medal-caliber team on the ice in seven months. Brooks learns at his initial interview that the committee's sights are set low; they're not asking for world-beaters, they just don't want to be embarrassed.
Brooks is bent on bringing home the gold, a laurel which slipped through his fingers when, as a young player, he was cut at the last moment from the gold-winning U.S. team during the 1960 Games. But to win they must beat the Soviet juggernaut, the greatest hockey team in the world at the time -- who had recently humiliated a team of NHL all-stars with a crushing defeat on their home ice. The first period buzzer sounds about a half-hour into the film with Brooks choosing 26 amateur hockey players -- mostly mop-headed college kids -- to compete for 20 roster spots on the national team.
The second period is all about the uncompromising bulldog, as he whips his ragtag bunch of underdogs into a team of ice gladiators and gets them to believe in themselves. It quickly becomes apparent that the "commies" are the least of their problems, as the practice arena turns into a battleground for school rivals to settle old scores. Brooks uses every trick in the book, from motivational psychology to borderline sadism, to defuse the escalating collegiate cold war, achieving a detente by drilling it into his young bucks that the three letters emblazoned across the front of their jersey are more important than the individual names on their backs. Though the film is full of cliched sports conventions, including grueling go-for-it training montages and be-all-you-can-be epiphanies, O'Connor keeps the action engaging and the pacing brisk.
The third period is all about the game itself. Having overcome personal differences, physical injuries and personal doubts, team members are led by Brooks into battle. The U.S. wins several surprising upsets in the qualifying rounds, setting up the David-vs.-Goliath face-off against the Soviet skaters -- but not before Brooks delivers the film's prerequisite Vince Lombardi locker room pep talk, which, though not the caliber of Henry V at Agincourt, is enough to inspire his team to skate into sports immortality.
While it is difficult to give each of the team members equal time and development, several key players emerge from the pack, including team captain Mike Eruzione (Patrick O'Brien Demsey) and goalie Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill). Instead, O'Connor keeps the narrative focus on Brooks making the story as much about personal redemption as it is about national pride. Patricia Clarkson does her best with the limited role she is given as Brooks' wife.
Along with O'Connor, director of photography Daniel Stoloff and editor John Gilroy deserve gold medals for their spectacular work in choreographing the thrilling showdown between the Cold War adversaries -- which, it should be mentioned, was not in the gold-medal round -- raising the bar for any future feature-film sports re-enactments.
Adding to the overall adrenalin rush is the original commentary by Al Michaels, whose now-famous "Do you believe in miracles?" line never gets stale, and can still lump the throat of even the most cynical viewers. If someone pitched this as an original idea, no one would believe it. But the fact that it did happen makes its storybook ending, music swells and all, easy to applaud. The film transcends sports and reminds us that greatness resides in each of us.
Where the narrative skates on thin ice is in its failure to effectively translate the demoralizing malaise that had broken the spirit of the country by the dawn of the 1980s. Though the film's opening sequence sets the historical backdrop -- concisely recapping the oil shortage, Iran hostage crisis and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- the movie never fully captures the urgency of that moment, in the way that "Seabiscuit" did for the Great Depression.
Though in keeping with the Cold War stereotyping of the era, the film misses an opportunity to show viewers that sacred humanity skated on both sides of the rink, choosing instead to paint the Russian team as a big "Red" machine of automatons, an emotionless Iron Curtain coached by a Brezhnev-browed caricature of Soviet severity. Gladly, the film's flag-waving patriotism steers clear of ugly jingoism.
In a time of growing national disillusion, "Miracle" is the kind of hopeful feel-good film that gives moviegoers something to believe in.
Due to minimal mildly crude language and some rough sports action, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II -- adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG -- parental guidance suggested.
* DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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© Copyright 2006 Catholic Communications Corp.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Communications Corp.