obsession with Detail

In 1980, the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets and won the gold medal. I vaguely remember the big fuss about this at the time, but in 1980 The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, and The Blue Lagoon (my second-ever R rated film!) each claimed a great deal more of my attention.

Miracle is a standard docudrama recounting the training and victory of that gold medal team. The film hits all the usual sports movie clichés hard and delivers just exactly what it promises. The most interesting part of the film is how the coach, Herb Brooks as played by Kurt Russell, plays head games with his team. He manipulates their responses with Machiavellian panache, which makes him a darker and more interesting character than the film ever seems willing to acknowledge. Russell brings his usual solid craftsmanship to the role and has some fine moments, but he can’t really do much with such an underwritten character.

The team members are anonymous, interchangeable guys played by anonymous, interchangeable actors. Half-hearted attempts to individualize them never amount to much. One is grieving the loss of his mother, one is upset with a team mate about . . . something, one refuses to take a psychological test (or is that the same guy with the dead mother?). Anyway, they all look and act so much alike that you begin to wonder if this is a movie about clones.

There’s a lot of hockey in this film, none of it filmed in a particularly interesting way. The final game against the Russians feels like an uncut rebroadcast of the original game. And the thrill of victory doesn’t hit home the way it should because we’re not given compelling reasons to care. The game is framed more politically than personally, an antidote to the nation’s Carter malaise rather than a personal victory for the coach or the team. We’re happy that they won, and that the game is finally over, but we don’t get a sense of why it matters personally.

Twenty six years later, I still can’t see what all the fuss is about.

Miracle (2004)
Grade: C+