BURN THE TAPE: Miracle is Terrible for Promoting Mediocre Hockey

Hockey Hall of Fame My Ass

In the second(ish) addition of BURN THE TAPE, the super special bonus hockey movie review column, we try to take an objective approach to evaluating the highest of quality movies Hollywood has ever produced. Unfortunately for this week, that is not the case.

Today, we are taking a look at Miracle, a movie about terrible, overachieving college players who somehow bullshitted their way to the 1980 Olympic gold medal, ruining the streak of multiple Olympic victories for the greatest dynasty this sport has ever seen. It focuses on a coach deliberately assembling a lacklustre roster that had no business of getting even close to medaling, a bunch of lazy players who have to resort to American Nationalism™ for them to start actually trying, and then being granted national hero status for something that is considered mundane for the Soviets.

If you go onto Rotten Tomatoes, you will see that this western propaganda film achieved a review score of 81%. This isn’t so much surprising, as any film that glorifies Americanism over any apparent foe will do great in the eyes of those who review movies for a living, but its really nothing more than a movie intended to pull on your heartstrings just like any other sporting movie you can name. Unless you really want to witness the event that caused the American Olympic committee to forever not just take their best players and instead go for the “underdog” effect every Olympics, then you are better off watching a movie like The Blind Side for the same effect.

---

The movie starts off with a very weird time lapse sequence of the major events in the 1970s in the United States, from the Vietnam war, to the Watergate Scandal, to even the death of Elvis Presley. Even for a movie that is trying to tug at the heartstrings of American Exceptionalism through an underdog luck, it implies that due to the current events we are about to see on screen is what leads the States into a golden era in the 1980s after the issues that the country faces in the 1970s.

We first see Herb Brooks being interviewed for the position of head coach of the USA national team and presents his case to the US Olympic Committee. He mentions that the team needs to immediately adopt a new playing style of the team based a hybrid of the Soviet and Canadian way of playing, already admitting that they need to imitate the great hockey dynasty’s strategy and mix it in with Canada’s style. While Brooks describes his plans for a new training schedule and new playing strategies, the committee take shots at him, seemingly doubting his abilities at every term.

The weird sticking point for Brooks seems to be that even though he acknowledges the Soviets use a team of all-stars who buy into a system, he is quick to mention how teams filled with all-star talent is unmotivated. Wasn’t expecting the backwards thinking this early.

After getting home and avoiding his wife during a costume party, Herb gets a call back from the USOC. While it ruins all of the upcoming plans the Brooks family has, Herb himself is dead set on coaching.

Then the training camp starts, with all of your usual sports movie tropes. You can tell which players are going to make the team due to their names being the only ones set out loud in introductions. Jack O’Callahan, one of the players that will be selected comes up to the future USA starter in Jimmy Craig, calling him a sieve. Was that even a slang people used back in 1980?

Throughout the first on ice sessions, all of the USOC members are there evaluating the players, with the movie emphasizing that the future captain of this team Mike Eruzione has absolutely no change in hell at making this team. Yawn.

Even with all of the evaluators present, we see that Herb absolutely does not give a shit about any of their opinions and finalizes his roster. Remember, this is still the first day of the training camp. When his future assistant coach Mr. Idontcaretorememberhisname shows up, he is absolutely flabbergasted at the thought of Brooks leaving off some of the best players off the roster. And in response, we are greeted with this wonderful line.

This single line has ruined more hockey franchises more than anything in the past 50 years.

Just to make sure we establish that Herb is gonna be the asshole kind of coach, he makes that very clear during the scene where cuts are announced, telling them “I will be your coach, I won’t be your friend”. Inspiring.

Now before I go any further, I have to acknowledge the performance of Kris Russell as Herb Brooks in this movie. While yes, his performance is pretty good (for what he has to work with), the fact that he spends the entire movie with this quasi Canadian accent becomes very off putting the further the movie goes. For a film to be so undoubtedly American, it’s such a strange direction to try to sound as Canadian as possible. Hockey movies, man.

After a few shots of the players celebrating being named to the team at the bar and some exposition between the players, we reach the first national practice. Since this is a movie based on 80s hockey, a fight breaks out between O’Callahan and Rob McClanahan due to a college rivalry, with Herb just letting the two duke it out. We are then treated with our first Motivational Speech™ of the movie, where Herb Brooks talks about how now it’s all about the team, and how nothing is more important than the team.

A little bit further into the movie, we have the assistant coaches sitting in the car, and since this is a move set during the cold war, they are mandated to have a discussion about total nuclear detonation. Fitting for a hockey movie, eh? Then comparing Boston and Minnesota hockey rivalries, saying that it’s their little own cold war. Cause hockey and nuclear bombs are just so similar! Those silly hockey players and politicians.

In the next scene we get to just how intensely Herb is into his work, to the point where he starts ignoring his wife’s request to take care of his own kids. Nothing shows devotion to the sport then disregarding everything your wife says, amirite 200 hockey men?

However, since this is a sports movie, Herb pulls out an old photo of the 1960 Olympic team which just so happens to feature him, he realizes that perhaps alienating your spouse is not a good idea. After getting her blessing, all things are back to normal.

Onto the training montage! We’ve got skating montages, we’ve got players who are struggling that are obviously going to play huge roles in the climax of the movie, and we even have the staple “the coach drawing a play so complicated that the players are too stupid to understand.”

On to the first exhibition game against Norway, where the Americans couldn’t even beat a team whose nation will go on to produce only one good NHL player in their history. (ed. note: Patrick Thoresen didn’t have his nuts blown off by a Mike Green slapper just to have you ignore him for Mats “Like A Lizard” Zuccarello) With his team more interested in picking out the women in the stands than what is actually happening on the ice, our hero Herb has a proper lashing ready for them.

Here come the famous Herbies, where the entire American team is bag skated into oblivion (despite this being a professional rink in Norway, didn’t book the ice, and didn’t even allow the Zamboni driver to clean the ice). He bags skates them until the lights go out and then continues to bags after. If there were concerns that Brooks was pushing his team too much, then this takes it to a whole other level. The physical torture only ends after team captain Mike Eruzione has to scream out his American Patriotism™ before Brooks lets them go.

All that pushing his team, the Americans go on to get absolutely destroyed by the Soviet team 10-3 in the exhibition game right before the start of the Olympics. I would say this was a hard moment to watch for our heroes, but I was having a blast during this part. Only complaint is that it ended way too soon for my liking.

Now with the Olympics starting, the Americans are down on of their better defenders in O’Callahan due to a knee injury, Brooks decides to pull on last trick to inspire his goalie Jim Craig by telling him he sucks. After the standard, “we don’t get you coach” line, and Herb responding with him saying that he wants to see the best of what he can do, he immediately puts him in net against the first game.

Sweden is the first opponent and the Americans are looking solid if unspectacular. After McClanahan (there are way too many similar sounding names on this roster) gets injured, Brooks comes into the dressing room and goes on another tirade. Disappointed that the team filled with a bunch of college kids is losing to Sweden, he berates McClanahan for taking off his gear, daring him to get back in the game. McClanahan responds back yelling “I am a hockey player!” over and over again, and this moments is what inspires the team to actually try harder and get the team to tie the Swedes 2-2.

With the movie completely brushing over wins against Czechoslovakia, Romania, West Germany and Norway, the set up is finally here against the big bad Russians.

As we have seen previously, this movie is all about the movie clichés, so what do we get right before our final showdown? That’s right, another Motivational Speech™! Can’t pull off one of the most unlikely victories this sport has ever seen without a whole scene of some inspirational talk for Kurt Russsell and his fake Canadian/American hybrid accent.

To get the team inspired, Brooks tells his players that the Soviets time is done, and that it’s the Americans time to shine. Which is a kind of strange statement to make as after the Lake Placid Olympics, the USA did not medal for the next five Olympics, with the Soviets winning the next two Olympics, with the remnants of the USSR winning it again in 1992. I don’t think that one loss here means the Soviets’ time is done, Brooksie.

During the actual game, the game goes about as what you would expect from the average Dave vs Goliath kind of match. The Soviets go up early, with the Americans being demonstrably outplayed. Can’t get shots on net, the Soviets have a constant attack that leads to chances, the usual stuff not unlike what we saw from the Tampa vs NY Islanders series that just ended.

So how do our “heroes” pull off the victory? Well, it all starts of with the Americans attempting a long shot from the blue line and with an American player going in one on two, splitting the Soviet defender before roofing it on Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie who was likely the best goalie of all time. Sure.

The second period goes much the same way, with the Soviets retaining the the lead and holding on to it for the rest of the period, as the game is now 3-2. This period did give us one moment, a move that was undoubtedly the stupidest move that a Russian coach has ever done, he pulls Tretiak out of the net and puts in the backup Vladimir Myshkin. It’s just baffling more than anything.

The third period starts off with the Soviets taking a tripping penalty, and the Americans respond with tying the game with only 4 seconds remaining in the power play. Then, with 10 minutes left in the third period, Eruzione takes a wild shot from the blueline that trickles in past Myshkin giving the Americans the lead for the first time in the game. What’s baffling is that the on ice officials are completely okay with the entire bench coming on to the ice.

For the rest of the game, the Americans have to rely on Craig for holding onto the leads and the Soviets throw everything at the net. This entire movie has made it very clear that goaltending involves flailing in front of the net like a fish out of water. If any proper goalie coach were to watch this, they would have brain aneurysms watching this performance.

So after the game is over, we see the Americans going crazy, while Brooks heads into the tunnels and seemingly breaks down, the first time we actually see the coach show any emotions other than disappointment. While this game was the main focal point of the entire movie, it was not even the game that secured the Gold Medal for the United States, which was against Finland. Even more so, that game was almost completely ignored, other than a quick overview and a short monologue from Herb saying how it was more than a hockey game.

The movie ends with Brooks saying that due to this victory, the US finally has to a chance to dream and to believe once more, tying it back to the opening montage at the beginning of the movie. In a sense, the entire purpose of this movie was to bring forth the idea that because of winning gold at the 1980 Olympics, the United States was finally saved from the low points of the 1970s.

---

So that was Miracle, told from a salty Russian hockey fan. Was it a good movie? No, and that’s not me saying through my bias, but from an objective standpoint. It’s as generic as you can get. It does everything that any generic underdog sports movie does, without bringing any interesting new ideas or beliefs.

In fact it promotes the very same beliefs that has plagued hockey for generations. Whether that be coaches getting away with physical abuse, that you should not build your team around the best players you can, or the fact that team chemistry is what is more important than actual skill. For a movie that came out in 2004, it’s messages that they wanted to make sure that this way of thinking is still relevant then, not just back in 1980.

Bottom line is, if you think you have seen enough inspirational sports movie, then you do not need to bother with this one. It’s bland, it’s average, and its not worth your time.