America, 1979. Vietnam is over, but the Cold War shows no signs of thaw. Destruction dominates the nightly news as Russia invades Afghanistan.
Stateside, Elvis is dead, while “Watergate,” “inflation,” and “Ayatollah” live on as household words. In July Jimmy Carter takes to the U.S. airwaves to deliver his famous “malaise” speech. The President says that his country faces a “crisis of confidence” that threatens to destroy its very “social and political fabric.” Americans simply need something to wake them up, and Herb Brooks is just the man to give it to them.
Herb is a successful college coach hired to revitalize the sluggish U.S. Olympic hockey program in preparation for the 1980 Winter Games in New York state. Expectations are low for the team, which hasn’t brought home a medal since 1960. A respectable showing at Lake Placid is the best Brooks and his squad of amateurs can hope for, since every odds-maker in the world favors the Russians to take home their fifth straight Olympic gold. The Soviets are faster, sleeker and stronger than any team in existence; in the hockey world, they are virtually unbeatable. Virtually.
Brooks is unprepared to settle for anything less than total victory. In assembling a 20-man unit to take to competition, Brooks discards many of the “best” players at the tryout, setting his sights instead on whom he deems “the right ones.” Herb has seven months to turn his team into a family, and he’s willing to be hated if it brings his boys closer to one another.
They’ll have to be in top physical condition to beat the Russians at their own game, and Herb gruelingly drills them again and again and again. In a flash of determined creativity, Brooks forever changes the way American hockey is played. Other teams try to defend the ice against the unwavering Soviet offense, but Herb’s team will be aggressive and take the puck to them.
The rest is history, and now history is a new movie from Walt Disney Pictures, the same dream factory that recently turned out the fact-based sports crowd-pleasers “Remember the Titans” and “The Rookie.” While “Miracle” has a more familiar subject than its blockbuster predecessors, it arrives in theaters this Friday with a lengthy running time and no big-name star above the title. Facing stiff box office competition from “Barbershop 2,” the film’s financial future looks as dour as the American team’s initial chances of upsetting the Russians. But don’t count out the underdog. Vividly recounting what many consider the greatest moment in sports history, “Miracle” is the type of well made, rousing Hollywood entertainment that gets audiences on their feet with excitement and could incite hot word-of-mouth ticket sales for the frigid winter film season.
Thankfully, the makers of “Miracle” remember the story’s all-important historical context without turning the final sports duel into a contest between good America and evil Russia. The U.S. is the youthful upstart, Russia is the mature master competitor, and only one can come out on top.
Director Gavin O’Connor and writer Eric Guggenheim guide the audience through each step of the team’s progress concisely but not over-emphatically. The film instead embraces the refreshing simplicity of its plot structure: the Russians are the best, this is how to beat them, and this is why it’s important.
Despite the film’s title, Guggenheim doesn’t spotlight the Americans as a miraculous “team of destiny.” Brooks inspires his team with the notion that “great moments are born from great opportunities.” He believes that hockey heroes are born on the ice in the moment of play and more out of necessity than ambition. Indeed the moral of “Miracle” reads less like “good triumphs over adversity” than “do the best you can with what you have.” If you have the chance to be great, it’s up to you to make it happen; of course, believing that you can do it doesn’t hurt.
O’Connor and Guggenheim have crafted a terse, focused narrative that gets straight to the point without sacrificing detail. O’Connor captures the rink-side fury of the film’s hockey matches with all the grit and heroism of the real events, ratcheting up the tension in every collision and slap shot without venturing into amplified Bruckheimer-style bone-crunching.
Especially thrilling is climactic battle between the United States and the U.S.S.R., a bona fide nail-biter despite the game’s well-remembered outcome. The director is wise to acknowledge the mythology of the event but never succumb to it; at times the action teeters towards sentimentality, complete with slo-mo and musical swells, but the images speed up and the score fades just at the point before reverence crosses the line into self-congratulation. The authentic feel of the storytelling makes the usual sports film clichs go down surprisingly easy.
Standing tall over the whole production is Kurt Russell, giving a career-best performance as Coach Brooks. Sporting a gruff Chicago accent and a haircut that would make Marv Albert proud, Russell makes plaid pants look intimidating, dispensing off-ice wisdom and on-ice strategy and ferociously chewing gum like life depends on it. Yet behind his laser stare is a deeply empathetic man filled with doubt that he is doing the right thing. Russell finds cavernous reserves of pain, fear, and integrity inside Brooks, and the audience feels the secondhand sting when he must begrudgingly pare down a 21-man squad to a team of 20. The actor brings gravity to every frame; he is intense without being barky, compassionate without being cuddly. It’s easy to believe Russell as the mastermind behind the miracle. His post-victory private moment near film’s end is the kind of scene that can induce hard-earned lumps in grown men’s throats.
One wishes the intimacy felt with Brooks could extend to the young men of his team. Goalie Jim Craig and captain Mike Cruzione come into focus midway through the film, but the rest of the guys drift mostly anonymously in and out of the action. The audience never really gets the time to know them past who they are in the arena. Perhaps, though, this is the point, and Herb’s focus on teamwork over individuality has extended to the filmmaking.
“Miracle” is telling the story of a specific event in history, and these men are more important to this story taken as a unit than as singular characters.
During the film’s end credits, each team member gets his own title card, replete with information on what each player is doing nowadays. Some moved on to coaching, some to the stock market, some to selling insurance. It’s a smart way to remind the audience that these giants of sports history were and still are regular guys who had a shot at greatness and stole it without regret. In reliving their story, “Miracle” is gently, gracefully inspiring.
It’s the rare movie that tells you that anything is possible and actually makes you believe it.