"Tucker at the Movies: Miracle"

The film Miracle tells the true story of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team that pulled off the impossible and ousted the USSR team on route to winning the gold medal. The game was much more than a simple hockey game it came during the peak of the cold war. The event came at a time when Americans were down on their luck, the king was dead, gasoline was in limited supply and overpriced, Russia had invaded Afghanistan, Americans had been taken hostage, and Americans were shocked by the Nixon debacle.

This was in a time when the hockey team wasn’t made up of a bunch of spoiled millionaires who were given free vacation to a far off location to pretend they care about the gold medal. The team played together for almost a year together before they went to the winter games. The team was a collection of college and junior hockey league players. An actual team.

The movie produced by Disney resulted in taming the language that likely spewed out of the young team and potty mouthed coach, but that sacrifice aside the writers tell true to the actual events. Of course the story itself of the underdog no one believed in doing the impossible seemed like a Hollywood fabrication so not much tinkering had to be done. However that is the beauty watching this film and knowing almost the entire events in the films narrative actually happened, and HBO’s documentary “Do You Believe in Miracles?” has the footage and interviews to prove it. In fact Miracle is just almost a motion picture remake of the documentary that I perhaps I should have hold off on letting Liza see till after our trip to the Cinemark.

Anyway the addition fleshing of the story lies in the life of the colorful coach Herb Brookes brilliantly played by Kurt Russell. Trust me I don’t throw around the term brilliantly when it comes to movies. However Russell manages to dissolve every ounce of his persona into the legendary hockey coach. He even nails the stature and you will forget almost entirely that it is Russell playing make believe. The film takes us occasionally into the home life of Brooks revealing that he had two true loves the game of hockey and his actual wife. Brooks was old school and never minced words and theorized that a system played by hard working well conditioned athletes could be an All-star team that relies on individual talent (are you listening Glen Slather?) . The story line is clearly more interested in studying Herb Brooks life than marketing the fresh faced actors playing the hockey team to young horny high school girls which could have made for a Freddie Prinz Jr. like flick.


As far as hockey movies go this the best hockey film ever made by far. Of course that is not saying a lot (to be fair I haven’t gotten around to seeing D3 or the one that the Duke starred in) but making a hockey film is extremely hard since you can’t fake the sport like baseball for football. First the casting department must find hockey players and turn them into actors or actors that can actually skate. However you don’t need to be a hockey fan to enjoy this film just like you didn’t need to be a horse racing fan to enjoy last year’s depression piece Seabiscuit. The acting is surprisingly solid for the mostly rookie cast, and Russell’s role is to anchor the inexperienced cast. Although a first viewing it might be hard to distinguish one fresh faced long haired hockey player from another especially if you don’t most know the story. Most notably Eddie Cahill, who plays goalie Jim Craig will is not only talented but stunningly handsome (Liza says he looks eerily like me) stands out in a few intense scenes with his windower father and Brooks.


Russell deserves an Oscar nomination for his performance but of course he won’t get it with the timing of the films release. However the release couldn’t come at a better time, the condition of the country’s morale easily rivals that of 1980 with the country divided over policies, evaluated terror alerts, war, and truck loads of corrupt politicians and political lies.

As for the hockey fan in me I am glad to see they didn’t make the movie too vanilla and gave us references to the IHL, Joey Mullen, and Pelle Lindberg that will likely zip over the heads of most movie goers like Mike Eruzione’s shot over a falling Commie goalie’s shoulder.