"Most heroes started as criminals, right?"

Rating: 7/10 (28 April 2013)

If you accept sports as entertainment with machismo and honor, you can appreciate this film for its' dressing room clichÃ© humor and small town usual killing time on the road for the Charlestown Chiefs, a minor league hockey team led by an over the hill payer-coach and in a town one plant closing short of collapsing. Loving hockey, I saw this in the theater and still see it as a small town story. It may have a cult following, but that is not to say it doesn't light the red light for new fans as well. Quoted as much as Spinal Tap and The Godfather, the writing is crisp and action hilarious as Paul Newman works his con man act on a memorable team of cast offs. This film remains both relevant and funny with some really silly scenes countering a few heartfelt moments. I said, a few, as the transformation of this hockey team of cast offs into a goon-a-thon on ice. The characters not on the ice are just as memorable for their proliferation of the problem that Nancy Dowd was writing about