Customer Reviews

Miracle (Full Screen Edition)

5 star:		(177)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

As the Cold War fades into memory, it is hard to explain the on-going, almost mystical fascination with The Miracle on Ice; the defeat of the vaunted Soviets by a bunch of unknown American college kids. Yes, national pride plays a big role, and more generally everyone loves an underdog. But I think what has really made this event such a cultural touchstone is the pure joy that surrounded it. Across the nation, and the world, for a myriad of reasons, but distilled and purified in the players and coaches who pursued their dream not for fame and fortune, but because the only dreams worth chasing are the hard ones.

"Miracle" captures this spirit down to the smallest nuance; in a day and age when you are as likely to read about athletes in the police blotter as the sports page, it is refreshing to watch people play for the pure joy of sport and love of the game. The ability to capture this love of the game was made possible by the fact that every single one of the actors portraying a hockey player was first and foremost an actual hockey player. That's not to say they can't act, but they sought out the opportunity because they have scored Eruzione's game winning goal a thousand times on a rink or pond or even on asphalt and they wanted an opportunity to tap into a little bit of that magic. They didn't audition for "Miracle", they tried out for it, and once they had the job, they went to training camp to prepare for filming. This attention to detail comes through in spades; I know hockey, but you don't have to be an expert to realize these guys are in great shape and have been on the receiving end of a check more than once.

In contrast to these raw and unseasoned actors stands Kurt Russell, a Hollywood veteran (and admittedly a very big hockey fan). His portrayal of Herb Brooks is dead on; from the voice and mannerisms down to the single minded determination to beat the best team in the world. Moreover, his punishing conditioning regimen and mind-bending schemes are accurately portrayed without bogging down in details that would likely bore even dedicated fans. The supporting cast is likewise strong, and wisely limited in large part to just Brooks' wife and assistants. This focus mirrors the way Brooks lived the game and minimizes distractions.

So the film has real hockey players and fine actors in all the key roles but the most daunting task for the director still remained: how to portray a game where the outcome is know when the NHL hasn't found an entirely effective view for live games. The answer was to use as many ice level shots as possible, which serves a twofold purpose. The first is that it is much easier to follow the puck when it is the focus of the shot, and at the same time, when a hit or injury is the key part of the scene, the puck isn't a distraction. The other reason this approach is successful is because this player's eye view of the ice injects a sense of urgency that makes victory seem in doubt even when it is a known factor. A corollary to this approach is in the narrative of the game with the Soviets; the director wisely chose not to reinvent the wheel and used Al Michael's definitive call, which includes key commentary from Ken Dryden which can be informative for the non-hockey fan.

In the end, what this all adds up to is the perfect encapsulation of the joy I referenced above. The cold hard fact is that we are unlikely to ever see such joy in sport again, as professionals have come to dominate Olympic team sports and high schoolers join the pro ranks as soon as they graduate and middle schoolers go to strength and conditioning camps under relentless pressure from their parents. What "Miracle" portrays is a joy born of a love of competition, a love of sport and a love of teammates that has become all too rare. That's not to say that this movie only portrays sunshine and roses, but the ultimate goal transcended any one individual. Some of the best scenes in the movie have nothing to do with hockey, but rather the camaraderie that comes from sharing simple things with good friends.

Superb in its portrayal of perhaps the greatest sporting event of all time in every aspect - from acting to wardrobe to the game on the ice, "Miracle" is an absolute joy to watch. It wisely frames the geo-political import of the game and then sets it aside, focusing instead on the beauty of sport and the satisfaction of hard earned accomplishments.

Jake Mohlman.

The first hockey games I ever watched were during the 1980 Winter Olympics and I know I was not alone in that respect. It took a while to understand what a blue line had to do with icing the puck and I have never gotten past the idea of what basketball would be like if it was played the same way as hockey (you are allowed to foul the guy with the puck/ball). But I remember watching the games the U.S. Hockey Team played against the Soviet Union and Finland. How big was the miracle that Al Michaels proclaimed during the final seconds of the semi-final match against the Soviets? Well, when "Sports Illustrated" came out the next week there was no need for a headline or caption on the cover photo of the U.S. team celebrating.

Knowing what is going to happen in "Miracle" is important because if we did not know that this team is going to win the gold medal then we might suspect the means that coach Herb Brooks (Kirk Russell) is using to achieve that end. Brooks is haunted by the 1960 Winter Olympics, when he was cut from the U.S. team a week before it won the gold medal. It was also the last year the Americans beat the Soviets on the ice and Brooks knows how to pull off the upset against the best hockey team on the planet. All it will take is a team that he handpicks playing the way he wants them to play.

The best part of this film is watching how Brooks does exactly that and then becomes basically a spectator and cheerleader when his team goes out and wins the gold medal. Director Gavin O'Connor hits a bulls eye with the casting of Russell, who should get serious Oscar consideration for his performance. The hard driven coach who puts his sport before his wife and family is something of a cliché, but what matters here is how Brooks' determination and intelligence comes through as he molds his team.

The production also scores because they went out and got hockey players to act instead of trying to fake us out the other way around. The only real professional actor on the team is Eddie Cahill, but he plays goalie Jim Craig. You can put anybody you want behind a mask in goal on the ice (former Edmonton Oilers' goalie Bill Ranford in fact) and because Craig was such high maintenance and high profile he was the one role where you needed to up the acting level. But Michael Mantenuto as Jack O'Callahan, Patrick O'Brien Dempsey as Mike Eruzione, Nathan West as Rob McLanahan, Eric Peter-Kaiser as Mark Johnson, and the other 15 players on the team are playing exactly what they are: hockey players brought together to create a team.

One thing I was surprised about in the film was that there is never an explicitly stated reason why Eruzione was picked as the team captain. Yet in the context of the film I was right in thinking that I knew exactly what Eruzione was going to do that was going to make him stand out as first among his teammates. (You will know what I am talking about when the moment comes).

The fidelity to recreating the moments we remember from the 1980 Olympics was quite impressive. You can check out the added features on this two-disc DVD set to see direct comparisons of the television footage from the actual games with the movie's re-creations as well as the techniques used to give you a dynamic feeling of being on the ice. Of course getting Al Michaels to "call" the games again was a necessity and it is not surprising that they worked in the original version of his famous line that gives the movie its title. You can re-create history but you cannot really improve on it, although this 2004 film does a nice job of trying to accomplish that particular feat. I just wonder if those who know nothing about what happened at Lake Placid in 1980 can appreciate that as much as those of us who do.

MIRACLE takes us back to a triumphant moment in American history just when Americans needed one--the miraculous win by the U.S. Olympic hockey squad over the vaunted team from the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. Framed by the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate that had settled onto our country like a malaise, the film ratchets up things even further by giving us glimpses of the Iranian hostage ordeal and the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets.

Stepping into the fray is Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), a veteran hockey coach who as a player came within one step of joining the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey squad that handed the Soviets their last loss in ice hockey at Squaw Valley. As the film opens, in the summer of 1979, Brooks is given the task of putting a respectable hockey team onto the home ice in upstate New York for the Olympics. For Brooks, however, merely putting a respectable team onto the ice wasn't good enough for him. He wanted the best; and through his relentless drive and his not ingratiating himself to his players, he prodded them to put out nothing short of the best they had in them. The result was that miraculous 4-3 win over the Soviets in the first medal-round game that a few days after that propelled them to a Gold medal via a win over Finland.

Russell, never the showiest of actors but nevertheless one of the best, gives a superb performance as Brooks (who was killed in an auto crash shortly after filming was completed), a man who dedicated himself to putting a winning team into the history books and succeeded. As had been the case in THE THING, EXECUTIVE DECISION, TOMBSTONE, and BREAKDOWN, Russell shows us his professionalism by not necessarily being Mr. Nice Guy, but a man who strives to achieve the extraordinary in his players. Patricia Clarkson is good as his wife (in a too brief role), and Noah Emmerich does a good job as Brooks' assistant.

The gut-wrenching game between the U.S. and the Soviets is recreated in vivid detail with all the hard hits and chants of "USA! USA!" rumbling throughout. But MIRACLE is, thankfully, not about American jingoism and arrogance. It is about achieving the impossible, which is exactly what all Olympic games are supposed to be about. It is an incredible piece, well worth seeing more than once.

I am looking for the right ones". And that is really what this movie is all about: the power of people working together as a team instead of individually. Nowadays, we are tired of seeing superstars in different team sports that think that they are the greatest thing in the world and that their teammates are just the supporting cast. This is true in the US mostly in football and basketball, and in other countries in the word mainly in soccer.

I was born in Uruguay and lived there until the year 2000, and therefore am a big soccer fan. I am tired of seeing the players from my country excel in their European clubs only to see them fail miserably when they play for our country. The reason is that several of them think they are stars when they come to play for Uruguay and neglect to play as a team. They should all get together and give this movie a try!

Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) is the new coach of the US men's hockey team that will compete in the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid and has a huge task ahead of him. The Soviets dominate the world's ice hockey and US was embarrassed in their last attempt in the Olympiads. But this is not all that Herb has to face in order to succeed. Right from the start he has to fight against the politics surrounding hockey in order to be able to select the players he wants instead of the ones he is supposed to choose. Also, several players carry grudges from their college games and are unwilling to help each other.

The movie revolves around the challenges faced when trying to create an efficient team, the stress of competition and the spillover of work into one's personal life and the strain this causes. Of course, if you like ice hockey you are probably going to enjoy this movie a lot. However, if you do not like or understand the sport, you can still enjoy the storyline. In my case, working in a company that has season tickets for the current champion of the National Hockey League, the Tampa Bay Lightning, it was easy enough to start learning about the sport and loving it before watching this production.

I have to admit, I am laughing out loud at the people that gave this film a bad rating. Not because they didn't like it for whatever reason. Not everyone is expedted to like everything. But if you notice, when they try to say why it wasn't good, they go off on a tangent on something else. They try to deflect from the film itself by making the strangest, most out place comments about a movie. This isn't just about hockey.

One person said: "Too slow for children.". Someone else said: "Herb Brooks was mean". Nahhh, really? Herb, mean?

I don't even think these people should be allowed to have computers. Scary stuff.

Number one, who cares if it's "too slow for children" Put them to bed and get over yourself. Number two, Herb Brooks WAS mean, but in case you missed it every player he ever coached had IMMENSE respect for him because he didn't coach that way to fuel an ego, he did it because it was his style and it worked time and time again. Herb Brooks was a very interesting and complex person and this movie did a nice job of illustrating that.

This film is very close to accurate (only the O'Callhan hit on McClanahn in their first practice was not a factual event in an attempt to further insinuate the hatred between some of the players on the team. The Minnesota and Boston players had quite the rivalry.) and the WAY it was filmed is very impressive.

You really get to see the relationships between the players and the coach develop. You also get great insight inside the personality of Herb Brooks.

This movie is an exact historical chronological layout of Team USA's run for Olympic gold medal. One that they never supposedly had a chance at.

I think the real test of this film is, the game and the story is so amazing you half expect to go into the theater expecting to be let down because we all know the result. It can't be as good as the real thing, right? This film comes as close as you can imagine. People were standing up in theaters cheering and no one moved from their seat when it was over. That speaks volumes.

The speech Herb gives in the locker room before the game against the Soviets I have read before, and to see it be depicted on film is very moving. I don't cry at films, but I did at this one.

I also saw it 3 times and it was great on all 3 trips.

The one thing I said walking out of the theater was "you don't even have to like hockey to appreciate this".

That's exactly why it's a great film. Only the people who missed the point see it as one dimensional.

Superb.

It's Kurt Russell's best role to boot.

Also, this movie had the players from that team in awe of how accurate it was. It's been blessed up and down many times over by the members of the team.

Check it out.

The producers of "Remember the Titans" and "The Rookie" are seeking to bring to the quasi-sophisticated American viewing audience, films that bring American values through sports stories to the forefront. In "Miracle", their latest and greatest effort, they've truly succeeded, not only in making their audience feel good, but also in presenting an amazing moment in our history that could too easily be forgotten.

"Miracle" tells the story of the US Olympic hockey team of 1980,
and their heart-stopping victory over the Soviet team, in winning the gold medal for the first time in decades. Set amongst the turbulence of the times, Miracle is beautifully filmed and edited, and succeeded in making the audience I viewed it with cheer for the team, perhaps nearly as much as we all were cheering at Lake Placid.

Raised on hockey in Minnesota, I'd seen Herb Brooks for years before the Olympics, and veteran actor Kurt Russell gives us more of what he showed us in "Dark Blue". His portrait of meticulous, self-reliant Brooks, is right on target, down to the plaids the coach was known for wearing. His is a dominant portrayal, although he's surrounded with young hockey players who are craftsmen, and supported by fine actors Patricia Clarkson and Noah Emmerich. Russell doesn't try to be popular with the audience any more than Brooks wanted popularity with his teams or his fans. He plays it much as the obsessive Brooks, "the 21st guy" on the 1960 Olympic hockey team, who was cut before the games, would have wanted it. Brooks died before he could see the film.

Although the movie is unabashedly formulaic, the combination of the dream, the reality, the beautifully filmed and tense hockey sequences, and the sheer joy of the team and the country, at a time when there was not much else to cheer about, has succeeded in a way that most sports films can't.

A great movie, sure to be full of great features on the DVD!!!!

In 1980, at the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, NY, the American men's ice hockey team, comprised of young college players, took on the best ice hockey team in the world, the Soviet Union's, and won. The U.S. men's team went on to win Olympic Gold that year, for the first time since 1960. I remember watching that game. I wasn't a fan of ice hockey, but neither were most of the viewers glued to their television sets. Only someone living in isolation could have been unaware of the U.S. men's hockey team's unexpected performance at the Olympic Games that year. They had earned a spot in the medal round, against the Soviet Union. This was just as the Cold War was heating up. The U.S.S.R. had invaded Afghanistan. Americans were being held hostage in Iran. There was a feeling of national malaise. A young hockey team with more heart than experience had become unlikely heroes, at least in the minds and hearts of Americans. Even so, no one expected them to beat the Soviet Union. We only hoped they would put up a good fight. But win they did, in one of the most memorable televised sporting events ever. "Miracle" is a dramatization of that team's journey to the Olympic games and it's triumphant conclusion twenty-four years ago. I wonder what took Hollywood so long.

Coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) is the hero of the story. He had coached the University of Minnesota Men's Ice Hockey team to 3 NCAA championships when he was hired to coach the U.S. Olympic team. He proposed to employ a hybrid of the Soviet and Canadian styles of play, and to rely on teamwork instead of individual talent. The U.S. team had nothing to lose after several dismal Olympic performances, so they hired him. He spent only one day assembling the right players. And he trained them longer and harder than seemed reasonable to accomplish what seemed unreasonable: to win.

"Miracle" is shot in the color palette, and to some degree the style, of 1970s cinema, which gives the film a nice period air. The climactic hockey game, however, employs more modern cinematographic and editing techniques, which help make it exciting. "Miracle" spends a lot of time on that game, and director Gavin O'Conner, cinematographer Dan Stoloff, and editor John Gilroy deserve praise for making it suspenseful, even for those of us who remember the real thing. Kurt Russell splendidly transforms himself into a middle-aged, stoic, stubborn and very determined Coach Brooks. Patricia Clarkson and Noah Emmerich turn in very nice supporting performances as Brooks' wife Patti and the team's assistant coach Craig Patrick, respectively. There is an awful lot of training footage in this film, some of which should have been cut to trim some length off of "Miracle"'s slightly bloated two hours and ten minutes. But this is still a nice film. The first half is a little sluggish, although informative. The pacing improves in the second half, and the final hockey game exhibits a lot of skill and delivers a lot of excitement.

I love hockey, and being 20 years old, I had only heard the story of the 1980 US Hockey Team through my parents and I finally saw clips of the game itself on ESPN. The "Miracle on Ice" is considered to be the greatest sports moment of all time.

I purchased Miracle on a whim, because I love sports movies. I watched it that evening, and found myself in the arena, cheering the USA to victory over Russia. And, thank goodness I knew the conclusion, or I may have had a heart attack. :)

This movie stirs your emotions and gives you faith in the United States. I would loved to have seen that game firsthand. When you hear Al Michaels make the famous, "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" call, and see the guys celebrating, it's euphoric.

Disney and Gavin O'Conner made an amazing film. The two-disc set, packed full of special features, takes you inside the making of the movie, and also gives the actual players' perspectives on the experience of playing for Herb Brooks during the 1980 Olympics.

Do you believe in miracles?

After this movie, you will.

When watching this movie all I could think about was how amazing this was, to defeat the Soviet's in a game the Soviets dominated for twenty years. Here we have the underdogs of USA vs. the best team in the world hands down; not to mention that USA was just a bunch of college kids that have never played with each other before only against each other. Not only did the kids from team USA have to beat the Soviets and every other team in the Olympics but they also had to become united. Of course it's not that hard to become united, but with a bunch of rival college kids playing as a whole it was. Team USA had to put aside their differences and become a team more importantly to become a family.

I think it was Mark Johnson who said, "We're a family" as they were leaving for the Olympic Games in lake placid. And that's exactly what they had become. When you are on a hockey team you become so close to the guys you are with it's amazing. The best feeling in the world is being in that locker room with those guys and knowing when you step on that ice they are right with you. It's a bond no one can ever take from you. The movie depicted this so well that I was floored when watching how close every player was with each other. If you notice the way they acted when the players first practiced: O.C and Rob got into a fight over what had happened in the past. Later in the movie you notice the camaraderie especially on Christmas when the team goes to the doc's house for a team party.

Kurt Russell also did an outstanding job playing the part of Herb Brooks. From the way he talked right down to the style of coach he was. It was amazing to see the way Herb coached from the inside of the locker room. All I knew was what was said about him in the past. Now we went inside of Herb Brooks and really understood him as not just the coach that beat the Soviets but as a man and his passion for the game.

The other interesting part of the movie was that all the players actually had to work very hard to imitate the plays. Every game is almost the mirror image of what really happened. The directors and players broke down every move and goal and worked on it endlessly to make the perfect miracle on ice.

The way the players on Team USA showed their emotions made me really believe I was watching the real miracle. From the way loved the game to playing the game with all their heart. Herb Brooks told Rob Mclanahan in the game vs. Sweden that "a bruise on the leg is a hell of a long way from the heart" and this changed the attitude of not just Rob but they rest of team USA.

"Do you believe in Miracles?" If not then you have never seen this spectacular movie.

I've never been a hockey fan, but I remember exactly where I was when the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets in 1980: at the old Lou & Hy's Deli in Akron, Ohio. Somebody yelled, "Hey, the U.S. team just beat the Soviets!" and the entire restaurant broke into cheers and applause. The great thing about Gavin O'Connor's "Miracle" is that it makes us remember what a glorious, giddy moment that was. O'Connor carefully places the U.S. victory in historical context; in an America demoralized by Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis and the Iran hostage crisis, the Olympic hockey team's triumph was like the sun coming out after forty days of rain. The first half of the movie shows how Olympic coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) painstakingly built his team, and the last half is dominated by action on the ice. The last 20 minutes in particular--O'Connor's recreation of the U.S.-Soviet match--are as breathtakingly exciting as any audience could hope for, aided immeasurably by Daniel Stoloff's photography and John Gilroy's editing. Kurt Russell--perhaps the most underrated actor in Hollywood today--gives a rock-solid, finely nuanced performance as the tough, obsessive and somewhat anhedonic Brooks. It's greatly to Russell's credit that he seeks the truth of the man he portrays, rather than to make the audience love Kurt Russell. Brooks drove his players to the limits of human endurance and deliberately made them hate his guts, on the (correct) assumption that a team fighting mad and united against him was still a team fighting mad and united. He didn't want his team to love him; he wanted it to win, and win it did. Similarly, Russell gives us not a lovable but a truthful portrait of Brooks, and we end up loving him anyway because he is so three-dimensionally human. The movie's only real shortcoming, indeed, is that Russell and Brooks dominate it so much that the other characters don't register very strongly. (With such a huge cast of characters, including 20 hockey teammates, that probably was inevitable.) Patricia Clarkson as Brooks' wife, Noah Emmerich as the assistant coach and Kenneth Welsh as the team doctor all do fine work in underwritten roles. (Russell and Clarkson have such great chemistry in their few scenes together that one hopes they'll work together again, this time in a straight-up love story.) As for the team members--most of them actual hockey players acting here for the first time--none has a real chance to stand out, except possibly for Eddie Cahill as goalie Jim Craig. But they seem like a real team, they look great on the ice, and they deliver the goods when called upon to do so. Which is, of course, the whole point of the movie.