Well-done tribute but....

Rating: 7/10 (19 July 2012)

From reading other reviews, I think the merits of the movie have been pretty much covered so I will concentrate on a few areas that were missing, or just could have been done better. Heading into the 1980 Lake Placid games, America was coming off of the worst economic decade since the Great Depression, with high unemployment and high inflation. Gas prices (where you could get gas) were at all- time highs. American pride was still stinging from Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis and the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Americans needed Lake Placid to, if even for a moment, give them something to cheer for. At the beginning of Miracle, there is a brief montage that attempts to frame the events of February 1980 in terms of the political, economic and social issues that Americans faced. However, the movie comes up a bit short in terms of conveying the severity of the state that America was in at the time, and the general lack of confidence in the future. Miracle also did not do enough to emphasize just how good the Soviet team was. In fact, the statement by Herb Brooks in his pre-game speech, "their time is over" actually leads the uneducated viewer to think that the 1980 Soviets were a once-great team that was reaching the end of its dominance. Not true. The Soviets won gold in '56, '64, '68, '72, '76, '84 and '88. They would continue to dominate world hockey for another decade after the Miracle on Ice, and nothing less than the fall of the Soviet Union would be required to eventually dismantle them. They had, by far, the two best players in the world at their positions in Vladislav Tretiak (G) and Boris Mikhailov (RW). As was shown in the movie, the Soviets made a mockery of Team USA in an exhibition 3 days before the Olympics. The score was 10-3 but could have (and by all accounts should have) been much worse. Years later, Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov wondered if that result may have caused his team to take the Americans lightly when it actually counted. In stark contrast to the Soviets, Team USA was patchwork bunch of college kids of varying levels of skill and experience, and although some of them would go on to play in the NHL, there were certainly no Gretzky or Lemieux caliber players on the 1980 team. Director Gavin O'Connor certainly conveys to the viewer the notion that the Soviets were the best team in the world at the time, but should have gone perhaps a bit further to show just how far removed the Soviet hockey team was from the rest of the world; they were simply in a different world. Overall, Miracle was a well-done tribute to the 1980 Men's hockey team. However, it doesn't quite capture the epic effect that one single game had on a psychologically and emotionally exhausted nation. So profound and unlikely was that victory that the International Ice Hockey Federation called it the #1 Top Story of the 20th Century, and Sports Illustrated ranked the Miracle on Ice the #1 Sports Moment of the 20th Century.