Flak Magazine: Review of Miracle, 02.19.04

On its surface, Miracle is a typical sports movie: The young upstarts who fight the first day of practice are crafted into a team by a benevolent dictator, whose mastery of psychology is so beyond reproach that his near-cruel methods win their love and respect, and in the end, team and coach come together to achieve victory against impossible odds.

The problem, of course, is that this is precisely what happened with the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. What the seasoned moviegoer would normally consider sentimental manipulation is actually the real-life, already familiar story. Yes, goaltender Jim Craig's mother actually died of cancer three years earlier, and yes, after beating the Soviets and being draped with an American flag, he did scan the crowd mouthing "Where's my father?" Yes, fiery head coach Herb Brooks did mold a group of boys into a well-conditioned, well-schooled team that overcame some of the toughest odds in modern sports history. Yes, Sports Illustrated is probably right to name it the greatest American sports moment of the last century.

So what's a director to do? Literally, what is there to do, other than just turn Brooks into Vince Lombardi on skates and film a bunch of guys skating around with flags? But director Gavin O'Connor (whose clip-reel highlight — from his only released film, the 1999 indie Tumbleweeds — is of Janet McTeer teaching her teenage daughter to make out by biting an apple) works a small movie-making miracle. It's not he's made the first hockey drama that seems to understand the game, but that he's taken the Disneyest and most jingoistic of sports stories, filmed it for Disney and — without offending the core audience — stripped away its jingoism by subtly developing it into a challenging political statement.

Miracle opens with an extended montage of the '70s, beginning with war protests and Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, and moving onto Gerald Ford's "Whip Inflation Now" speech and those now-embarrassing WIN buttons. From here, O'Connor guides us through the cultural absurdities of the decade (disco, streaking, the Coneheads, Billy Beer), as if those oddities were just a natural outgrowth of the confusion and disillusionment of the era's political failings. Finally, we're given a synopsis of the troubles of the late '70s: recession, the oil crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The montage ends with Jimmy Carter's famous "Erosion of Confidence" speech. ("It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," the president warned.) As if heeding this call to action, the ragtag bunch of skaters works to replenish the spirit of the national will in a little rink tucked inside Rochester, Minn.

The opening evokes nostalgia, yes, but it also asks larger questions: Why was America failing? Were the Soviets winning the Cold War, and why? In the first scene after the montage, during his interview for the Olympic head coaching job, Brooks (Kurt Russell) is asked why the Soviets beat the hell out of the NHL All-Stars, and he answers: "It's not because you weren't good enough. All-star teams don't succeed because they rely on talent. [The Russians] take that talent and mold it into a system that's designed for the betterment of the team." It's a cliché, certainly, and not one that advocates communism, but one that frowns upon the decadence of the burgeoning Me Decade.

The subtext dies down for the long second act. As the film rolls along, it digs up all the sports-movie coaching platitudes: "Be prepared to grow through pain." "Great moments are born from great opportunity." "Maybe if they're all hating him, they won't have time to hate each other." The ultimate trial occurs after a lazy performance against the Norwegian team, which results in Brooks pushing the boys to the brink of collapse before they finally understand the team-as-family concept. Coach Craig Patrick (Noah Emmerich) plays the Greek chorus, staring at Brooks as if he's insane. Of course, St. Herb knows exactly what he's doing — as anyone who has played the game knows, "hockey player" isn't a job description or hobby, but some sort of spiritual ideal, and "hockey team" is a state of mind. So how much of a "psychological" mastermind is Coach Brooks? His first assignment for the team is a 300-question psych exam, which he gives because the real test is to see if his goaltender will refuse to take it. And how beautiful is Brooks' hockey mind? Well, he devises defensive zone breakout options on the rink glass like John Nash figuring out Reimann's Hypothesis from inside Princeton's library.

In fact, Russell's performance as Brooks is so intense and understated that it transcends the banality of this middle act. When O'Connor thrusts the camera in Russell's face, it's hard to see Captain Ron underneath all the wrinkles and jowls. As he's gotten older, Russell has gotten much more interesting as an actor. The temptation here is to get histrionic, to turn Brooks into a Woody Hayes figure. But Brooks has to maintain emotional control for the audience to buy that he "does everything for a reason." He only has a few outbursts (strategically planned, to wit), so the performance is built from the inside out. He scowls, he lectures and he's tough — but as Coach Brooks, Russell has a deadpan sense of humor and a deft touch with the young boys' emotions. Russell's bulk helps him intimidate physically, but he's got active, inquisitive eyes that project understanding rather than stoicism. His scenes with his wife, shrewdly played by Patricia Clarkson, are both gentle and wrenching. Essentially, Russell paints Herb Brooks as complex portrait of an American working man, father figure, and ambitious, ingenious opportunist — a unique American icon in answer to Carter's challenge.

Equally impressive are O'Connor's hockey scenes. There are no truly great hockey movies (Slapshot notwithstanding) because no one has captured the game's feel. Hockey is a great live sport because of the speed and grace of skating, the constant flow of players shuttling on and off the ice; O'Connor understands that, and places the camera at ice level, moving at hockey speed, cutting and stopping with the players. He doesn't bother explaining offsides or line changes, nor is there much bone-crunching or slow motion in the film — O'Connor just focuses on the beauty that emerges from chaos.

Almost any hockey story must be centered on the goaltending, and in these scenes, O'Connor shows remarkably the difficulty of Craig's job. As Craig himself said in an interview with Eddie Cahill, who portrays him in the movie, "When a person comes up the ice, there are 10 things a person can do, then there are seven things a person can do … you're eliminating things as a person comes at you. You are eliminating options." As the camera flows down the ice, we see those options narrowing, showing us the remarkable anticipation and reaction of the goaltender. We sense what those who know the game understand: Goaltending is a nearly metaphysical endeavor. This is important to the film because Craig's performance in the Soviet game was the key to the victory, both for the team and for himself.

As the Olympics approach, O'Connor's movie takes on its overtly political bent. Brooks agonizes over the team's final cut while the Iranians are burning American flags over his shoulder on television. The boys even give Brooks a nameplate that says "Ayatolla." To lead into an exhibition with the Soviets at Madison Square Garden three days before the Olympics, O'Connor boldly plays the Twin Towers card, showing us the skyscrapers as he introduces us to New York. At first, this seems like a shameless ploy, but O'Connor's first internal shot of the Garden is the USA skating out underneath a banner reading, "Soviet Union: Get the Puck Out of Afghanistan." This introduces us to the previously unseen Red Army, who rules the ice by intimidation and fear. O'Connor shows us, without demonization, that the Soviets' arrogance is as much a part of the "miracle" as the Americans' can-do attitude and relentless training. In fact, coach Viktor Tikhonov's pulling of goaltender Vladislav Tretiak after the first period remains one of the worst coaching moves in modern sports — yet in the movie, O'Connor lets him Tikhonov off easy; he calmly strokes his wing-tip eyebrows after the Americans sneak into the Russian zone and steal a goal at the end of the first period. It's a story that reaches back to the Lexington and Concord: The Red Army simply were not expecting a guerilla attack or a ragtag militia to withstand the siege.

With this, O'Connor sets us up for the payoff. The movie ends with Brooks delivering a monologue about what that victory meant to America. "A few years later, the USOC decided to send pro teams to the Olympics … 'Dream Teams,' they call them. But now that we have 'Dream Teams,' seldom do we get to dream." Here, Miracle — for all its Disneyishness — does something quite daring: The movie suggests that the same arrogance that drove the Soviets to send its Red Army team to international competition is the same arrogance that America projects with its Jordan-and-Zo-led squads. Why were the Soviets so hated? Because they insisted on dominating the world, even if that meant invading Afghanistan or forcing world-class goaltender Tretiak to renounce his desire to play in the NHL. And why did we create the "Dream Team" and destroy opportunities for stories like Miracle? TV ratings, for one, and why should we risk losing with such a fail-safe remedy available? The irony might get lost in the euphoria of victory, but looking back on the film, Miracle poses more tough questions about this victory than it provides answers about its ultimate legacy.

O'Connor shows us the Twin Towers to remind us that they aren't there anymore — and then reveals part of the reason why they aren't there anymore. Using the Olympics to gauge the rise and fall of two empires, Miracle shows us who we were then, and then asks who we are now. Are we still a nation that values those old ideals of sacrifice, hard work and perseverance in times of national trial, as we were called to during the Cold War? What has our president asked of us in these trying times? What have we done to replenish the American spirit, as goaltender Jim Craig and the boys did over two decades ago? As a nation, can we still celebrate minutemen if we have become the world's ruling empire? As Herb Brooks says, there will never be another Miracle for America. It will be someone else's miracle when they take the ice and finally topple the mighty Dream Team — all the while telling us to get the puck out of Afghanistan.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)