A hockey game to always remember

Rating: Null/10 (23 February 2004)

Kurt Russell stars as coach Herb Brooks in a true story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team winning the gold medal by defeating the powerful Soviet Union and Finland teams at Lake Placid. Brooks has had a dream of coaching the U.S. Olympic team ever since he was cut from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team. Brooks' dream comes true, and he gets the coaching job in 1979. Brooks puts together a team of college kids and begins to get them into shape. Since the Soviet Union is the greatest hockey team in the world, Brooks begins to retrain his team in the European style of playing the game. The Soviet Union team has won four consecutive gold medals and recently defeated a team of National Hockey League all-stars. Brooks said that the all-stars were individual players and not a team. With all his hard training, he finally turns these kids into the U.S. Olympic team, and a family. The team defeats the Soviet Union in the semifinal round by not allowing them a single goal for the last 10 minutes of the game. With the world watching the game on TV, Al Michaels asks his famous question at the end of the game, `Do you believe in miracles? Yes!' The team still had to play Finland in the final round, which they won. I am one of those people who saw this game, and it brought back our pride in the USA during the cold war. I liked the movie, but it is a bit too long. (Walt Disney Pictures, Run Time 2:15, Rated PG) (8/10)