There are times when Hollywood gets sports movies
right. Films like Hoosiers, Rudy,
Field of Dreams, Breaking Away and The Natural.

With Miracle, the story of the improbable run to the
gold by the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team, Disney
also gets it right. The story is well recounted and acted,
and takes a fascinating look at one of the most impressive sports stories ever.

The opening credits are presented with a collage review of pictures, video clips, and sound clips of the 70s then stops at 1979 and begins to tell the story of the 1980 US hockey team.

At a time when movies are shamelessly aimed at the young male demographic, here’s a film with a whole team of hockey players in their teens and early 20s, and the screenplay hardly bothers to distinguish one from another.

Miracle is a hockey movie that’s more about the coach than the team. The film takes the perspective of Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell), a veteran hockey coach from Minnesota who is assigned the thankless task of assembling a team to represent America in the1980 Winter Olympics.

The United States has not won since 1960, and the professionals on the Soviet team, not to mention the Swedes, the Finns and the Canadians, rule the sport.

Kurt Russell shows a new side of his acting talent. He’s beefed up as an energy filled, strong, middle-aged man who still wears his square high-school haircut, and has a fancy for plaid suits, ties, and pants. Patricia Clarkson, who plays Brooks’ wife, has
the tough role of being yet another movie spouse whose only function in life is to complain that her husband’s job is taking too much time away from his family time.

The real Herb Brooks, unfortunately died in a car accident just after the film was finished. The movie is dedicated to him, and presents him in all his complexity.

The film is full of quirks of his personality and style; the viewer can see he’s a good coach, but, like his players, he or she is not always sure if we like him.

The most impressive aspect of the film is the unique way that it focuses realistically on what a coach does and his or her motives for doing so. Brooks knows hockey and disappointment; he was cut from the 1960 American hockey team only a week before the first game, and so in this film, when he has to cut 54 players, Disney takes away most of the drama of the cuts, and focuses on the last time Brooks has to release a player.

We know how Herb feels — and he knows how the player feels.

Brooks’ strategy is to weave an air of mystery about himself. He assigns his assistant coach, Craig Patrick (Noah Emmerich), to become a friend to the players — because Brooks deliberately does not become a friend.

Instead, he stays separated from his players. He wants to be a little feared and a little resented. At one point, after chewing out his team in the locker room, he stalks out and, passing Patrick, says quietly, "That oughta wake ’em up."

After Brooks is selected for the job, his first task is to select his team. He immediately breaks with tradition. Brooks announces his final cut on the first day of practice; he already knows who he wants, and doesn’t require any advice.

He challenges authority by bravely talking to his assistant coach Patrick, and says, "I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right ones." He is searching for kids who are hungry and passionate and want to win. At this point, one is able to recognize the players, but not much is done to develop them as individuals.

The exception is the goaltender, Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill). He refuses to take a psychological exam that Brooks hands out, and Brooks tells him that, by not taking it, "you just took it." Later, when Craig seems to falter, Brooks benches him and says, "I’m looking for the guy who refused to take the test." We know all the clichés of the modern sports movie, but "Miracle" sidesteps many of them. Eric Guggenheim’s screenplay, directed by Gavin O’Connor, is not about how some of the players have little quirks that they cure, or about their girl, or about villains they must beat. It’s about practicing hard and winning games. The opponents are not even demonized all that much. When the U.S. initially faces the Soviets, they are depicted simple as the other team. They are shown in a very realistic light as clean, good, and aggressive hockey players with an authoritarian coach.

In keeping with its analytical style, the movie does not use a lot of trick photography in the hockey games. Unlike the fancy shots in movies like The Mighty Ducks, this film matches more or less the way games might look in a good documentary, or a superior TV broadcast. The viewer is in the middle of the confusion on the ice, feeling the energy rather than focusing on plot points.

That leaves Russell and his character Herb Brooks as
the center and reason for the film. Although playing a
hockey coach might seem like a cross check to the back
of the head for an actor, Russell does real acting
in Miracle. He has thought about Brooks’ character and internalized him; the real Brooks was a consultant to the film. Russell and O’Connor create a study of the personality of a man who leads young men through a process
that led him to disappointment 20 years earlier. He
has ideas about hockey and ideas about coaching, and
like the Zen master Phil Jackson, begins with philosophy, not strategy. The film doesn’t even end with the outcome of the Big Game. It ends by focusing on the coach, after it is all over.

One of the two main faults of this film is that Disney produced it with an excessively optimistic style. The other and more apparent is that there are too many close ups and the close ups are too close, so close at times that the viewer fears that the camera might hit one of the actors smack in the face.

The film hits home with its emotional and appealing plot, acting, camera movement, and screen play. The film takes a daring and new point of view. If your looking to change your perspective, or just want to have a good time at the theatre, Miracle may be a miracle of a movie to see.