Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

I was 17 when the United States defeated the Soviet Union in the semi-finals of the 1980 Olympics and I will never forget that moment.

A couple of years earlier I had watched Bucky Dent drill a Mike Torrez pitch into the screen at Fenway Park in the 1978 American League Eastern Division playoff and even as exciting as that was, it couldn’t match the emotion of 1980 and hearing announcer Al Michaels yell, “Do you believe in miracles?”

The Yankees were just a team and they weren’t everybody’s team … certainly not my mom’s or my brother’s, and they had to sit there on the couch and watch we jump out of my chair and hear me scream as Dent belted that homer.

No, this was our team.

And we had won.

The emotion, of course, was intensified because of the nationalistic sentiment floating around, what with the Soviet Union’s invasion into Afghanistan and President Carter threatening to boycott the Moscow Games because of it.

And we had won.

I was looking forward to seeing Miracle just to relive some of that winter (a winter when I was 17, still in high school, and getting ready to go to college). The only two hockey movies I ever saw were Slapshot with Paul Newman (which was funny) and Mystery, Alaska with Russell Crowe (which – as silly as it was – liked a lot).

Miracle is so, so much better.

Kurt Russell does a spectacular job as coach Herb Brooks (although his voice inflections seem to come and go) while Eddie Cahill (Jim Craig), Michael Mantenuto (Jack O’Callahan) and Patrick O’Brien Demsey (Mike Eruzione) did a great job letting us see what it was like for the players.

There was no enough individual drama in the movie and maybe that fit with Herb Brook’s concept – the name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back. But watching the team progress through its pre-Olympic schedule, seeing some of the stories of brutal practices come to life on the screen, and then watching the actual Olympics unfold was incredible.

The hockey sequences were filmed amazingly well and somehow – even though I knew how, goal by goal, it all turned out – the semi-final game with the Soviet Union still had my heart fluttering in my chest.

Miracle is highly recommended. True fans of hockey and of those particular Olympics will spot some obvious mistakes (like players shooting with the wrong hand), but those niggling little problems could hardly detract from a great movie.

See it. Stop whatever it is you’re doing (unless you’re operating heavy machinery) and go see it now.

“I’m not looking for the best players Craig, I’m lookin’ for the right ones.” – Herb Brooks in ‘Miracle’