Miracle (2004)

Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Starring: Kurt Russell

***

Miracle is a movie I let get the best of me the first time I saw it. Its a story that I've always been interested in and like any American, its impossible not to recognize the significance of what happened in in 1980. Just that combined with my passion for hockey made it very easy for me to overlook the flaws in this movie and just sit back and watch it. That having been said however, this movie is hardly flawless.

Flaws in filmmaking, flaws in performances and flaws in the storytelling doesn't necessarily make a movie flawed as a whole. Miracle is actually a pretty good movie. It doesn't capture everything it should but it captures the most important aspects. The character's struggles and developments are there and of course the triumphant conclusion is captured well. The trials of the times and the threat of the cold war... that isn't really revealed but its Disney, what can you expect.

Before I trend on what could have made this film better, I'll comment on what made this film good. Kurt Russell did turn in a good performance in this film but I was suggest its more of a deceptive performance than a great one. He mastered the Minnesota accent had by Herb Brooks and his mannerisms certainly matched Brooks but that alone doesn't necessarily make a performance. What Russell does best in his performance is carry the film, manage to film or, pardon the pun, coach this film in the direction its going. Even during scenes when his accent and mannerisms, while accurate, may have been a bit over the top, I did feel like he was in charge of the scene. Like Herb Brooks, he knew when the scene was about him and when it wasn't and Russell held the screen when necessary and shared it when necessary.

Sports movies are hard to make good. I'm not completely sure what it is about them that doesn't work but they rarely crack the average film category. A lot of Miracle falls into that category because it is a sports movie but it also clearly makes an effort to escape it. The way the hockey games are filmed is progressive and it works well. He juxtiposes the action of the game with the emotions of the players, coaches and fans. It mixes things up so while watching game after game, it doesn't become repetitive. All this is done while being choreographed to match how the 1980 Olympic games actually went. To me, this is what was progressive about the way it was shot and it worked because I was given the excitement of a fast-paced hockey game without having to abandon the drama of a movie.

Another obstacle that this movie needed to overcome was the performance of the hockey players. I'm a huge advocate for what this film did and that was taking hockey players and teaching them to act rather than trying to teach actors how to play hockey. There were only a small handfull of scenes when the players didn't have the acting chops to pull off a scene and even less frequently were those scenes important enough to really matter. What we got most of the time, was authentic accents defining where these characters came from, authentic mannerisms defining them as hockey players, and good skaters so we didn't to watch stand-ins feet on the ice the whole movie.

So while this movie did work despite its flaws, it did have its flaws, all of which I believe could have been avoided with one simple fix... another studio producer. Disney made Miracle and upbeat, polished, emotional movie and Miracle should have been just one of those things. It should have given us a mix of emotions, both good and bad based on the era in which this film takes place. Are darker mood throughout, a gritty look and something other than random audio clips describing the terrors of the cold war would have given this movie a conflict to overcome. Not only that, but it would have been the actual conflict that this hockey game overcame. The stay at home mom (Patricia Clarkson) who can't pick up both kids at once when Herb Brooks is at team meetings wouldn't have been the conflict. The movie tries to show us what the times were like by having convesations take place in the car while waiting in line to buy gas or news bullitens on TV and those types of scenes work but they still look so polished.

I look at what this film is and the emotional impact that is has on me and it makes it harder to accept the fact that the script in the hands of another studio. Gavin O'Connor, more recently directed Pride and Glory which certainly had a dark mood to it, so I don't blame him. In fact, I don't blame anyone. The movie is good and it has a consistent mood. I'm inclined to think its consistently the wrong mood but either way, I still smile at the end.