Miracle Man Film

[Fidelia Boldul]

Miracleis a 2004 American sports film directed by Gavin O'Connor and written by Eric Guggenheim and Mike Rich. It is about the U.S. men's ice hockey team, whose gold medal victory in the 1980 Winter Olympics over the heavily favored seasoned Soviet team was dubbed the "Miracle on Ice". Kurt Russell stars as head coach Herb Brooks with Patricia Clarkson and Noah Emmerich in supporting roles.

Herb Brooks, head ice hockey coach at the University of Minnesota, interviews with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) for the national team coach's job, discussing his philosophy on how to beat the dominant Soviet team who have won the gold medal in the previous four Olympics, calling for changes to the practice schedule and strategy. The USOC is skeptical, but gives Brooks the job.

Brooks meets assistant coach Craig Patrick at the tryouts in Colorado Springs. Brooks selects a preliminary roster of 26, indifferent to the preferences of senior USOC hockey officials. USOC executive director Walter Bush believes Brooks has their best interests at heart, and reluctantly agrees to take the heat from the committee.

During the initial practice, tempers flare as forward Rob McClanahan and defenseman Jack O'Callahan get into a fight based on college rivalry. After the fight, Brooks tells all the players that they are to let go of old rivalries and start becoming a team. He has each player tell their name, hometown and which team they play for. As practices continue, Brooks uses unorthodox methods to reduce the roster to 20 players. The players themselves worry about being cut at any time, knowing that Brooks himself was the last player cut from the US squad that won the 1960 Olympic gold medal, so he will do anything to win.

In the medal round, the Americans were overwhelming underdogs to the Soviets, who lost only a single Olympic game since 1964 and whose players were professionals, whereas the American players were amateurs.[2][3] The Soviets had scored the first goal before O'Callahan, having healed enough from his injury, enters the game for the first time. He heavily checks Vladimir Krutov on a play that leads to a goal by Buzz Schneider. The Soviets score again to retake the lead. Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak stops a long shot by Dave Christian, but Mark Johnson gets the rebound and ties the game to end the period.

Gavin O'Connor directed, and Mark Ciardi produced the movie. Both are drawn to inspirational stories, and they decided to take on the "Greatest Sports Moment of the 20th Century".[4] They chose to focus on the determination and focus of coach Herb Brooks. O'Connor knew from the beginning that he wanted to cast Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks because he needed someone with an athletic background and a fiery passion for sports. The casting of the team consisted of real hockey players to give the film a raw and accurate feel. O'Connor figured it would be easier to teach hockey players to act than to teach actors to play hockey. On-ice tryouts were held in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Vancouver. Another tryout was held in Vancouver for the Soviet and European teams.

There are a total of 133 different hockey plays in the film. To accomplish this, the directors turned to ReelSports Solutions, who had helped with the producers on a previous movie, The Rookie. The ReelSports team referred to coach Herb Brooks for information on practices, plays, equipment, and uniform styles. Each fight and stunt scene was choreographed to ensure the actors' safety. Players went through a six-week training camp to relearn the game in older equipment.[5]

All the locations of the real life hockey games are replicated by hockey arenas in British Columbia. The team tryouts, set in Colorado Springs, were filmed at the Queen's Park Arena in New Westminster. The team practices were filmed at the M.S.A. Arena in Abbotsford. The exhibition game in which the USA team lost to the USSR team at Madison Square Garden was filmed at the Pacific Coliseum, former home of the Vancouver Canucks. The Exhibition against Norway, the subsequent bag skate, and all Olympic game scenes were filmed at the PNE Agrodome.[6][7]

Al Michaels re-recorded most of his television commentary for the film. However, the last 30 seconds of the USA-Soviet game, including "Do you believe in miracles?" used the original audio, as Michaels didn't feel he could re-create the call effectively.[8]

Coach Brooks died in a car accident half a year before the movie was released. At the end, before the credits, it states, "This film is dedicated to the memory of Herb Brooks, who died shortly following principal photography. He never saw it. He lived it."

On Rotten Tomatoes, Miracle has an approval rating of 81% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Kurt Russell's performance guides this cliche-ridden tale into the realm of inspirational, nostalgic goodness."[11] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[12] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[13]

Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times stated that the movie "does a yeoman's job of recycling the day-old dough that passes for its story."[14] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times referred to the movie as "a classically well-made studio entertainment that, like The Rookie of a few years back, has the knack of being moving without shamelessly overdoing a sure thing."[15] O'Callahan said in an interview that while the fight between him and McClanahan was fictional, the film accurately portrayed the "pretty intense" rivalry between Boston Terriers and Minnesota Gophers players, and was overall "pretty darn close" to actual events.[16]

As of May 2023, Miracle was rated the number six sports movie of all time with a rating of 9.06 out of 10 at Sports In Movies, after maintaining the number one spot for several years.[17]

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I want to help people that have gone through a similar experience, but I knew by the end of the kidnapping that what I had was unique, and to have captured that ending! It was really the ending and what it took to get there. If I could build up the story of what it took to get to that moment then maybe it would mean more to people.

I think you get a sense from the film of how much waiting there was, I wanted the viewer to feel like us, but it only scratches the surface as the film is edited around the action parts, which were few and far between.

The days drag, one day into another and another. Those dinners we had; we were fortunate to have a team of people we could trust just there. Something to have a form of humanity that you can look forward to. They are really trying times, and just to be light-hearted and have something to look forward to, and a trusted meeting place. After the dinner it would turn into a serious planning meeting.

YOU could be forgiven for wondering why the world needs another Lourdes film after dozens of predecessors. Take heart: The Miracle Club (Cert. 12A), now in cinemas, speaks to present needs, though set in 1967.

"Miracle" is a sports movie that's more about the coach than about the team, and that's a miracle, too. At a time when movies are shamelessly aimed at the young male demographic, here's a film with a whole team of hockey players in their teens and early 20s, and the screenplay hardly bothers to tell one from another. Instead, the focus is on Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), a veteran hockey coach from Minnesota who is assigned the thankless task of assembling a team to represent America in the 1980 Winter Olympics. The United States hasn't won since 1960, and the professionals on the Soviet team -- not to mention the Swedes, the Finns and the Canadians -- rule the sport.

This is a Kurt Russell you might not recognize. He's beefed up into a jowly, steady middle-age man who still wears his square high-school haircut. Patricia Clarkson, who plays Brooks' wife, has the thankless role of playing yet another movie spouse whose only function in life is to complain that his job is taking too much time away from his family. This role, complete with the obligatory shots of the wife appearing in his study door as the husband burns the midnight oil, is so standard, so ritualistic, so boring, that I propose all future movies about workaholics just make them bachelors, to spare us the dead air. At the very least, she could occasionally ask her husband if he thinks he looks good in those plaid sport coats and slacks.

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