Twenty-four years later, we find ourselves asking new, even more troubling questions about national purpose and the condition of our collective psyche. So it can't hurt, amid the current traumas, to revisit the 1980 Winter Olympics for a couple of hours and bask again in a moment of unqualified glory. That's the real agenda, it seems clear, underlying Gavin O'Connor's deft, exciting Miracle, an unabashed flag-waver that does for its young hockey players what John Wayne used to do for the Marines and lifts all of us as well onto the boys' cloud of belief.
In the hockey team's case, the company commander was a flinty, no-nonsense coach from Minnesota named Herb Brooks, portrayed here with such uncanny accuracy by Kurt Russell that members of the 1980 team are likely to cringe in pain all over again, as Russell reenacts Brooks's ruthless drills and merciless scrimmages. For my money, it's the role that Russell's long been waiting for, and it's yielded the performance of his career.
What Brooks faced back in 1979 was Mission: Impossible. He had just seven months to build a team of amateurs capable of mixing it up with the world's best. Immature and seething with old college rivalries, his kids were a fractious bunch, and the striking cast of unknowns assembled by director O'Connor (Tumbleweeds) perfectly captures their unruliness and youthful daring. Not only that, but most of these actors can actually chase down a puck and deliver a forecheck. Patrick O'Brien Demsey, a former ad-agency intern who's terrific as Eruzione, played college hockey at Fitchburg State. Nathan West (Bring It On), who portrays Robbie McClanahan, got to the minor leagues. Michael Mantenuto was both a theater major and a hockey star at the University of Maine. Among the young principals, only Eddie Cahill (who plays Tag on Friends) has no hockey props, but he's just right as the team's famously dogged goalie, Jim Craig.
Even more important, Russell absolutely embodies Brooks's relentless will and the disturbing force of his regrets. As a player, Brooks had been cut from the 1960 U.S. team, which went on to win the Olympic gold medal. Since then, the U.S.S.R. squad, a brutally efficient veteran juggernaut capable of annihilating NHL all-star teams, had taken the gold in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976, and Brooks was fiercely, almost unnaturally, driven to beat the Russkies at their own game.
Like the Bad News Bears or Seabiscuit, his young Americans are hopeless long shots, but the tough, instinctive coach picks his players in just one day of tryouts and then brutally whips them into shape. "Not the best players," Brooks barks to his assistant coach, Craig Patrick (Noah Emmerich). "The right players." By the time we reach the climactic Big Game, we understand that he found them.
For his part, Russell infuses all the old sports-movie verities -- hard work, teamwork, courage -- with new life. Even if most feel-good sports movies make you gag, this one is likely to raise a lump in your throat, even as director of photography Daniel Stoloff and his nimble team of camera operators reproduce the thrilling rough-and-tumble of the game.
Apparently, things weren't always so inspirational for Brooks's wife, Patty (Patricia Clarkson). Here, he so neglects her that the marriage is threatened.
On Hollywood's surprisingly short list of hockey movies, the raunchy comedy of Slap Shot always puts it to the squeaky-clean uplift of The Mighty Ducks, while the pond-hockey fantasy Mystery, Alaska finishes a distant third. No more. Whether you're a hard-core puckhead or a moviegoer who's never picked up a stick, Miracle is the new champion of the rink -- a rousing, authentic charmer that goes easy on the schmaltz, but never hesitates to stir up real emotion. It didn't even require the real-life postscript that adds such bittersweetness to the story, but here you go anyway: Before the real Herb Brooks could see the movie, he was killed in an automobile accident. In times of trouble, maybe we get only one happy ending.
