8/13/2019 Miracle Review - Vimal
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The "Miracle" movie unreveals the dramatic story of how the
United States ice hockey team defeated the then world-champion
Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics. The arena-size tribal chant
''USA! USA! USA!'' has become a yahoo signature gruntat world
sporting events; in attempting to cut through the cockiness and
returnto the mantra's roots of optimism, ''Miracle'' alloys sports
glory with a flag-waving halftime show.
''Miracle'' is organized around a man's middle-aged passion,
that of Minnesota hockey coach Herb Brooks - whose own Olympic
hopes were thwarted when he played for the hockey team in 1960 --
for shaping an American squad (average age: 22) into players tough
enough to hold their own against the invincible Soviets. ''You're
chasing after something you didn't get -- that you may never get,''
Herb's wife (Patricia Clarkson) explains to her husband in one of
the many directional declarations supplied in the first produced
feature screenplay by Eric Guggenheim. (Other guideposts:
''That kid doesn't have a shot in hell of making this team,''
spoken before the kid makes the team; and ''Craig's game has been
off since his mom died,'' spoken in preparation for Jim Craig's
astounding goalie work in the big game.)
''Miracle'' -- the title taken from TV announcer Al Michaels'
famous game-clinching cheer, ''Do you believe in miracles? Yes!''
-- wins not when it exhorts by word but when it shows by action.
And some of the most riveting action takes place when Coach Brooks
is alone, quiet. Russell is another one of our ''USA! USA!
USA!''-bred crop of handsome man-not-boy actors who (like Alec
Baldwin and Dennis
Quaid) is finding exciting new performance freedom in
middle age. Outfitted in1970s hair, Gerald Ford-era plaid pants,
and a dandy Minnesotan accent, he's wonderfully compelling as a
tough, taciturn, driven leader. ''Miracle'''s most concrete
achievement is in showing how, step by demanding step, Brooks was
able to transform 20 young men used to playing as stellar
individuals -- the American way -- into an unintimidate-able,
egoless team, i.e., the Soviet way. ''Who do youplay for?'' Brooks
says, challenging athlete after athlete until it dawns on
one of them, during a marathon training session, that their
various school teams are not the unifying answer he's after.
''Miracle'' is shot in a palette of red, white, blue, and
hostage-crisis gray right down to the colors of the clouds and the
neckties; only Clarkson and Russell get to deviate in tones of
beige and powder blue, their relationship carefully
tended with contemporary sensitivity to the importance of wives.
The attractiveyoung men who make up Team USA, meanwhile, are their
own best advertisements for phys ed, nearly all of them hockey
players first and actors...as of now. (Eddie Cahill, cast as
goalie Jim Craig, had a recurring role on ''Friends.'') Their
unstudied openness contrasts pointedly with Russell's tight
concentration, as well as with energetic action sequences of skates
and sticks on ice.
What the U.S. ice hockey team achieved was magnificent, of
course, on its own athletic terms; so was Seabiscuit's race against
War Admiral. But the home crowd's sis-boom-bah frenzy has
taken on new shadings in the decades since both those events.
''Miracle'' has got a good offensive game as an inspirational
how-to about team building; it's in the reassuring defense of
American can-do-ism that the
