The performance of a lifetime

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2004)

The sports movie Miracle, about how the American Olympic hockey team won the gold at Lake Placid in 1980, defying all the odds and beating out the Soviet Union and Finland, is unabashedly a vehicle for a star, Kurt Russell as coach Herb Brooks. Miracle never escapes from certain essential conventions of the genre it represents. One by one team members emerge from the crowd for little moments in the spotlight, then fade back into the team. The coach has to struggle with his wife because as a husband and father he's barely present for the year of the Olympics. Cohorts and rivals challenge his methods. Then the big game comes at the end to rouse the audience and resolve everything exactly as we knew it would.
It's the last big screaming jingoistic Cold War victory, but then again it isn't: it's not about politics. It's about the game, the coach says, and since he sets the tone throughout, we buy that. What gives you the shivers and raises the blood pressure isn't jingoism but that old crowd pleaser, seeing an underdog come from way behind to win. And it's true this time: the story really happened, more or less anyway. And we get to see some real hockey players play hockey too.
Miracle is a star vehicle all right, because the focus is on the coach and his methods more than it is on the team. But Kurt Russell saves the movie and redefines the vehicle because he's self effacing without ever ceasing to dominate the story. Russell controls Herb's gruff manner with more subtlety than Gene Hackman or Denzel Washington - two actors who've done this kind of role so often they could do it in their sleep - would be likely to manage. They've done it too many times. They've started to yell. They've lost the feeling.
Russell succeeds in making his character's toughness subservient to his goals as a coach. He's aloof, hard, even mean, with the players as they meet and work out and the eliminations take their toll. His assistant coach, Craig Patrick (Noah Emmerich), gets to be the good guy -- and he does so winningly. But Herb Brooks's distance, hardness and meanness are clearly part of a strategic professional plan. At the end he comments years later that now pros play in the Olympic team sports and we have `dream teams,' but all that means is that the games we dream of never happen any more. He's not looking for a combination of the best amateur hockey players: he's looking for the players who'll play best together, not for a dream team but for the best team he can coach to victory at Lake Placid, beating all the odds. The best talent, the hungriest guys, the players with the biggest need to prove themselves and win.
Real hockey players play the team members. They're not just athletic actors who look good with their shirts off: they're guys who're really fast on the ice, and they're out there doing their own skating. The director shines here because except for one ensemble scene early on, there's no awkwardness in the acting of these young men. They come through as authentically as if they were all professional actors. Their presence gives all the dressing room and game sequences a sense of reality they'd never otherwise have. Hardly any of the players stand out, and that's good. There aren't any scene-stealers. It's a team. It's about the game: and here, the movie becomes less conventional and avoids clichés about oddball characters who overcome a laundry list of personal obstacles to become good players.

Herb galvanizes the men by making them angry at him, then a `family,' as one says after they've suffered together enough to want to stay together; and then they believe in their coach because they see his intensity. He's not trying to be liked; his eye is on the prize. He cares about what they care about and that makes him one with them. And so when we see that his family life suffers, it's clearly not a dysfunctionality but a necessary part of the whole strategy, a price to pay for being as focused as he has to be. Patricia Clarkson as Mrs. Brooks, dolled up in this non-indy role, is fresh and without sentimentality. Her indy quirkiness, toned down an octave, makes her seem authentic, not just window dressing.
Despite avoiding conventional tricks, Miracle never ceases to be a sports movie with a conventional trajectory. But nothing is too crudely telegraphed, even as the scenes are brightly hued. Take Herb's elimination of the twenty-first man, for instance: the time when he calls his last cut in to tell him. This is a guy who's `done everything I've told him to do.'
`There's no easy way to do this.' This is an emphatic, intense little scene, but there's nothing corny about it. Russell's forceful restraint works in scene after scene after scene.
Many times, as when a star player gets a serious knee injury, the writing underlines Russell's understatement. The coach just doesn't say much. He avoids telling the player what we've just heard the doctor say, that the kid will be out for four games. Herb just says he has to get the knee photographed and then see. He's merely present; there's no speechifying.

We don't see a lot of hockey before the final few games. During the early workouts and eliminations we see Herb make the team members do the same fast turning and skating exercise over and over to the point of exhaustion. No team has ever been able to outskate the Soviets, he says. They've got to be able to do that to win. The point is borne out in the key game when the Americans do indeed beat the Soviets by outskating them. They've also got an absolutely brilliant goalie, Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill), the one man who's shown his individuality by refusing to take a psychological test. The final couple of games leading to victory are covered almost play by play. This too contributes to a sense of authenticity. There's too much crosscutting to the coaches and fan reaction shots at the end for my taste, but this is a movie about a coach and a victory, not just about a hockey game. As the games develop, you realize that Brooks truly picked the talent he needed to win the gold.
The movie particularly shines at that inevitable clichéd moment, the final pep talk before the key victory. To begin with, Russell has good material to work with: the speech he delivers is extremely well written. `Great moments come from great opportunities.' he begins. There's not a word out of place. It's eloquent, yet Russell's strong, unflashy delivery strips it of any sense of patness or rhetoric. It's the kind of speech you could memorize, a Gettysburg address of pre-game pep talks. And its creative logic is brilliant: `If they played us ten games, they might win nine. But they have only one game, and we're going to win it.'
Yes!
In its simple way, Miracle is a well-made movie. Kurt Russell's extraordinarily impressive, self-effacing acting in the lead role is more than well done: it's the performance of a lifetime. And because of Russell's restraint his costars shine like winners, every one.