Well, you all know the story, I'm sure, of that hockey team and their run in the Olympic Games. But, most people don't know the story behind the team and their coach, Herb Brooks. This is what the film focuses on. We get to see how Brooks brought his team together and turned them into a winning team that was full of amateur players and college players. We also see what he goes through as a coach at home and on the ice with having to make hard decisions when it came to cutting players or to punish his team when they did not play to his expectations. Although some of those decisions weren't hard. We end the movie with the "Miracle on Ice" game that will have you standing up and cheering.
Kurt Russell is Herb Brooks and from pictures that I have seen of the real Herb Brooks, this was a perfect casting. Tragically the real Herb Brooks was killed in a single car crash the year before this movie was released. But, Kurt Russell is the reason we watch this movie because it is all about his character and what he does with it. This is probably his best performance because he nails it, especially near the end with his reaction to the Miracle. We also have Noah Emmerich as Craig Patrick, an assistant coach, and he is also great here as he is in everything he does. I really like Noah, to me he is an underrated actor who doesn't get enough recognition for the great roles he plays. Most everybody else in the film, mainly the players, are unknown actors but they all really do a great job and should be recognized as well with taking on an important film about one of the biggest sport moments in history.
Another person that we should recognize is the director, Gavin O'Connor, who hasn't done very many movies yet. In fact he has only done three that you may know, this, Pride and Glory, and Warrior, all of which are fantastic films and if you haven't seen them you need to. His direction is similar to that of Michael Mann's, and what I mean by that is he does films that have a very realistic feel to them. He doesn't do too much fancy camera work with them and the way they are shot makes it feel like you are in the room with the actors. We can also think Dan Stoloff for that because he was the cinematographer for this film and he shot great scenes with great shots that gave them a different effect and feel. So, scenes that were meant to be uplifting were shot differently than scenes that were suppose to be sad or serious, and each shot worked perfectly.
I believe the next big factor in this film was the score, I mean you can't have an inspirational movie without an inspirational score, right? Well, we get that thanks to composer, Mark Isham, who wrote a very inspirational score for the film and it works perfectly especially, of course, at the end. Finally, to me a good sports movie needs to have good editing because so much is going on that they can easily miss something and put it in the film where it is not suppose to be. That has happened a lot, just watch the scoreboards in sports movies, it will read a different score than it's suppose too. But, here we have good editing overall, with the exception of the missed scoreboard, once I believe during the main game. But, the rest of the editing is done very well and gives the film some extra inspiration to it as the cuts get faster during the Miracle game. This is a very good movie of a very important event that has great acting, direction, editing, and score. By the end you yourself might just be standing up and cheering!
3.5/4 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment