Choices

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2004)

I was as wary as the next person when it came to this movie. How often are sports films just pathetic?
This particular film, however, was fantastic. The choice to use hockey players instead of actors just floored me. There is nothing scarier than taking someone who has never acted before and trying to work with them on acting skills, becoming frustrated and just letting it go. However, the casting, and the work done with these kids was amazing.
The hockey games are phenomenal, the choices of editing and cuts and various lighting effects just fit.
The scene with the Herbies was brilliantly executed. The actors actually did all those Herbies for three days! The real team actually did them as well, for an hour after the game.
This story is about as accurate as it gets in terms of historical films, and is one of the most exciting movies I've ever seen. We were inside the theater cheering and yelling along with the crowd on the screen. We knew how it came out, but it was that well filmed and executed that we couldn't help it.
I'd like to end with a comment for the users who said that the light marked 4 was confusing because they were waiting for a fourth quarter. First off, if you know anything about hockey, you should know that hockey only has 3 periods, and that any given hockey scoreboard is also being used for sports such as basketball, which do have 4 quarters.
Secondly, you'd think that after the first few games, all of which ended after three periods, you might notice something was similar.
Thirdly, even if you don't know anything about hockey, this is an event that happened only 24 years ago, and is permanently etched into the American psyche. You would think that you'd take the time to notice a basic rule of the sport, but apparently the American way is to ignore all events that have ever happened, except in some sort of vague one word reference to it. The filmmakers did an excellent job in making what was happening understandable, even for non-hockey fans, it's not their job to assume that you're a complete moron and spoon feed you basic tenets of the sport. They didn't do a long sequence explaining that you score by the goal going into the net did they? They assumed that after you saw it go in, saw the scoreboard increase and saw people celebrating and calling it a goal that it would be enough for you. They didn't expect you to wait for the field goal point and be disappointed when it never came.
Your own basic ignorance is not the filmmakers fault, so get over it.