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255 comments in total

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28 out of 37 people found the following comment useful :-
what I thought, 31 January 2004
Author: Leslie from Minneapolis, Minnesota

I am the child of two St. Paul east- siders. My father has loved hockey for as long as he can remember. My mom, well, she just likes sports in general. Hockey ruled my life from the very first moments. First my father's practices and games, then my little brother, later on there were boyfriends, friends, high school, and college. Now there is Gophers and Wild. I imagine that hockey will continue to define my life for a very long time.

That said, for Minnesota kids there are legends told to them from the beginning. How Paul Bunyan shaped our lakes and rivers, and lived "Up North", and there is Herb Brooks. Legends that define Minnesota heritage.

Herb Brooks was a man who shaped the way hockey is viewed in Minnesota. A stand out at St. Paul Johnson High School, and at the U. He went to coach his beloved Gophers and work with his idol John Mariucci. Now the ice at Mariucci Arena (not 2 miles from where I sit now) bears tribute to Herby. His coaching techniques are still used and abused throughout the state.

Kurt Russell paid apt tribute to our late leader, and I am positive he would be impressed. I was fortunate enough to get sneak-preview tickets to see Miracle, and I can honestly say I don't remember when I had such a good time at the movies. I don't think I stopped smiling once. Russell's accent was good throughout the movie, but on just a few lines I could have SWORN that he was a Minnesotan. He elongated his vowels very well.

Eddie Cahill did a superb job as Jim Clark. I wondered how exactly he would play someone so torn between immense sadness and undeniable pride. I was even more impressed with his hockey skills. I hope that this helps the very yummy Mr. Cahill move from TV-boyfriend dujor (friends, Sex and the City) to a great movie actor. As it is the only thing that disappointed me was that he was running around the Cities last summer, and I had no idea.

If you are still reading this it goes without saying that I think you should see this movie. Sure you know how it ends, you've probably seen the game at least once on ESPN Classic even if you are old enough to remember it in the first place. The portrayal of our country at such a dark time in the world's history is historically great. Apt tribute is paid to Afghanistan (even if we are repeating the USSR's mistakes now), the Ayatollah, the oil embargo, and the general distrust in government. The Miracle on Ice was a very bright spot in a very dark time, and Miracle does a wonderful job showing just that. To those who say, who outside the US cares? I say hockey fans care. Sports fans care. This is not just a hockey movie (though it is a great one); it is a movie about hard work and perseverance. Isn't that what America really stands for?

So, Bravo Disney. I think Herby would have been pleased. I know that I am.

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18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
A Miracle for Disney, 13 May 2005

Author: (j.lacerra@yahoo.com) from Philadelphia

Don't let the fact that this is a Disney movie deter you from watching a thoroughly enjoyable and adult-level sports movie for two-plus hours. Kurt Russell does an excellent job portraying coach Herb Brooks as a complex and sometimes ruthless and inscrutable leader. Very UN-Disney-like indeed.

I am not a hockey fan - in fact I dislike the game intensely - yet I enjoyed the well-crafted scenes of competitive team play. Knowing the outcome of the BIG GAME did not detract at all from the excitement and suspense surrounding it. Sort of like the suspense Ron Howard achieved in Apollo 13 (where we knew in advance the outcome, but were worried about and later relieved for our astronauts).

A must-see for sports fans and non-fans alike.

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24 out of 34 people found the following comment useful :-
I don't like hockey, but this was a good movie, 29 November 2004
Author: MLDinTN from TN

I was too young to have known anything about this game when it was played in real life, but it was definitely more than a game. It concerned world politics and the cold war. The movie did a good job showing how seemingly impossible it seemed for the young American team to beat the best team in the world who had been playing together for 10 years. And Kurt Russell did a good job as the tough coach who was hard on the players to get the most out of them. I also liked the way the hockey games were filmed. I think hockey is the most boring sport and I don't know any of the rules, but the way it was filmed let the least knowlegdable person follow what was going on.

FINAL VERDICT: If you like sports movies, then don't miss this one.

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19 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
8/10 movie about a 10/10 accomplishment, 17 September 2004
Author: garysjwa from Florida

It's hard to recreate the magic of a once-in-a-lifetime event, but Miracle comes pretty close.

It succeeds in recapturing the spirit of the times, the personality of coach Herb Brooks, the tension of the game, and the exhilaration of Al Michaels' famous call as the clock went to 0:00. While there are plenty of minor things I could quibble about, Miracle's ability to recapture the spirit of the Soviet upset makes it a success.

A movie about this subject could easily have been a stinker, but Miracle isn't that at all. It's a great sports movie that suffers only in comparison to the real story. I gave it 8/10.

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
It was winter of 1980, and I remember it well., 1 November 2004
Author: TxMike from Houston, Tx, USA, Earth

'Miracles do happen', the announcer's original broadcast is heard during the scenes recreated for this movie, 'Miracle.' Anyone who remembers what happened during those Winter Olympics in 1980 will know what this movie is about, and how it ends. However, there can be no spoilers, because this is not a movie about a hockey game, or even the sport of hockey. Nor is it about the players. It is solely about the coach, Herb Brooks, who, with his unconventional style and wisdom about the game, took these young hockey players to a level no one thought possible. In the end it didn't really matter whether they won or lost the game against the Russian. What mattered was that each of the 20 players found out what was possible inside himself.

The movie begins with a montage of scenes from the period, the years, leading up to the selection of the Olympic hockey team in the summer of 1979. The cold war. The oil shortage and long gasoline lines. The disgraced President Nixon. The embattled President Carter. The Russians invading Afganistan. Then we see coach Brooks doing it his own way. A year and a half of scouting, one day of try-outs, to pick the 26 players which would eventually be cut to 20 for the competition. The DVD extras show us how much went into making the movie faithful, including a session with Brooks himself, who died in an accident right after filming was wrapped up. A very fine movie of a very inspirational journey.

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12 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
Very Realistic Hockey Scenes Help Make This A Winner, 3 October 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

This was a pretty nice movie overall. It had its bad points but they were more subtle. The good stuff was out in front: the realistic hockey scenes and the inspiring true-life story of an amazing underdog sports team pulling off the "miracle." That, of course, was the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team winning the gold medal and along the way becoming the first team in 20 years to defeat the Soviets.

The story also is about Herb Brooks, the coach of the team. Everything in here centers around him. Kurt Russell does a nice job playing him, although I don't understand the Polish accent Russell used. Why would Brooks have a Polish accent?

Over the years, sports movies - as in other genres - are becoming more and more realistic. This was about as good as it gets in that regard. A number of the actors are players, meaning they know how to skate. A documentary with the DVD shows the great lengths they went to in filming this in order make the action look realistic. It's not fake; these guys know how to play the game and the camera-work, along with the sound, is outstanding.

For a fairly long film (135 minutes) this film moves by fast and the drama is there but not super-intense since everyone knows the final result. The story is basically, as mentioned, about Brooks and the way he molded a group of kids together to play so well as a team. Many of his ideas would not have been implemented had others had a say, but Brooks proved them all wrong.

The only part of the film that was totally unnecessary was the typical Liberal slant that Hollywood just has to put in our faces every chance it gets. Here, they do it by quick cheap shots against Republican Presidents while airing an inspirational speech by Democrat Jimmy Carter. They have just stuck with the hockey angle, which the filmmakers here did extremely well. Still, it's a very good sports movie that even non- hockey fans should enjoy.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Good movie, 30 March 2004

Author: michael-hatch from Texas

I was wary at first of Disney production of this film. I didn't want the cheesy Mighty Ducks type of sports movie, especially when dealing with the awesome task completed by these players. I thought the film makers did a nice job and the movie itself was quite entertaining. I think it exposes a whole generation to the 1980 U.S. hockey team and what they accomplished. Even though I am not a fan of Kurt Russell, I thought he was very good as Herb Brooks. He had the mannerisms and the voice down very well. Russell is a huge hockey fan himself so I know it was honor for him to play Brooks. For die hard hockey fans, this movie will entertain and it does not poison the game action or what it is really like to play hockey.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
An Enjoyable Film Even If You Don't Like Hockey, 3 April 2005

Author: christian123

In 1980, Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), a former Olympics hockey player cut from the winning 1960 U.S. team, put together a ragtag band of college hockey players, taking them to the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid to face the seemingly invincible Russian hockey team, winners of four successive gold medals. Miracle tells the true story of how they worked together to defy the odds working against them. Everyone likes a good upset especially when they can cheer on the winning team. Miracle gives you that story and its a nice film to watch with your family. I don't watch hockey because I don't really like it and its just not very appealing to me. But there's things that non-hockey fans can enjoy from this film. I liked the determination from the team and the inspiration the coach gave to them. Kurt Russell does an awesome job as Herb Brooks, probably his best performance in a long time. Patricia Clarkson does a good job playing his wife and all the players on the team aren't bad either. The one actor that was bad was Noah Emmerich, he just showed little to no emotion and didn't really put in a good effort. This wouldn't had been a problem if he had a small role but he was the assistant coach. Miracle is directed by Gavin O'Connor and he does a good job. The hockey itself wasn't actually that bad as some scenes of the game were pretty cool. The focus is on mainly on Russell and while you learn some stuff about the players it would had been nice if they had shifted some of the attention on them as well. The screenplay may be filled with clichés but the film does it right even if it feels like you have seen it before because you probably have. The film is 135 minutes long and for me it started dragging a little and getting kind of boring. The movie is also predictable so the ending game as well as the entire movie isn't really suspenseful. The focus is more on beating Russia then actually winning the medal. When they do play in the final game and win the medal, they only show them scoring the winning shot. After that Kurt Russell starts talking saying how they won the last game by coming up from behind. While we know the outcome to the whole thing it still would had been nice if they had added a few more scenes. Its also better then The Mighty Ducks but that's not a hard thing to do. Rating 7/10 a treat for hockey fans and a film that a normal movie-goer can enjoy.

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Russell Shines in Story of '80 Olympic Hockey Triumph..., 13 May 2004
Author: Ben Burgraff (cariart) from Las Vegas, Nevada

MIRACLE, the Disney retelling of the U.S. Hockey squad's astonishing Gold Medal performance at Lake Placid in 1980, is not a great film (a TV-movie from 1981, "Miracle on Ice", despite the bizarre casting of 69-year old Karl Malden as 43-year old coach Herb Brooks, is superior, although relying heavily on TV footage for game sequences), but it does offer Kurt Russell in one of the finest performances of his long career.

The 53-year old Russell, a life-long veteran of both TV and film (making his debut on a "Sugarfoot" TV episode, at age 6), has developed a reputation over the past two decades as a very competent, if not overpowering leading man, primarily in action films (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, TOMBSTONE, BREAKDOWN) and comedies (USED CARS, CAPTAIN RON, OVERBOARD). What is often forgotten, however, is that he has remarkable 'range' as an actor, with brilliant performances in the TV-movie "Elvis" (1979), the underrated SWING SHIFT (1984, where he met his long-time love, Goldie Hawn), and 2003's DARK BLUE (as a crooked cop searching for redemption during the bloody aftermath of the Rodney King riots in L.A.). As age has carved his features, Russell has lost the "beach boy" glamor that had often 'stereotyped' him in the past, and gives his 'Herb Brooks' a sense of credibility and pain that lifts his performance to Academy Award caliber.

Herb Brooks was a remarkable person, long before Lake Placid. Despite success in coaching a string of national champion college hockey teams, he had never recovered from being the last player 'cut' from the 1960 Gold Medal U.S. hockey squad, and from being a member of the '64 and '68 teams that were humiliated by the Soviets. Driven by a desire to beat the nearly invincible Russian squad, he realized that a group of college 'all-stars' would never possess the 'team' skills to get the job done. Ruthlessly, refusing the assistance of the U.S. Olympic Hockey Committee, he pieced together a squad of talented skaters, 'broke' them, then remolded them to fit his vision, working them unmercifully for over six months, while spouting Vince Lombardi-like platitudes. Despite his torturous regimen, just days before the Olympics, his team would be humiliated by the Soviets, 10-3, and no one gave his squad a chance for a medal.

But Brooks had faith, and a squad that was 'hungry'...

While the film suffers from a lack of depth in the portrayal of the players (by the way, they do all their own skating; TV footage is not used), MIRACLE's 'feel' of the decade is well-done, using montages and voice-overs to convey the American sense of helplessness in a decade of tragedies. The unexpected U.S. victory galvanized the nation (Al Michaels' stunned reaction, "Do you believe in Miracles?", has become a catch phrase for both the game, and the times), and actually contributed to turning the country around.

While the Academy Awards will probably ignore Kurt Russell's commanding performance (as the film was not a 'hit'), MIRACLE is still a film worth viewing, given our own troubled times. While the film may not be 'great', it's message of hope is certainly worthwhile!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Disney's has finally come back with a hit, 22 July 2005

Author: mOVIemAN56

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Miracle is, in my book, a great sports film. Disney is finally able to come back with a smash hit sports film. Miracle follows the true-life story of Coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) and his team in there goal of winning the 1980 Olympic games in hockey. Standing against them is the seemingly invincible Russian squad who the team must overcome.

The film follows the entire team from training, to the cut lists, and right to the Olympics. Instead of a dragging sap story, Disney decides to focus the movie more equally with Herb Brooks and his family and the team and there own little family they've formed between themselves. I'm really not to fond of the sport of hockey but the scenes on the ice are beautifully crafted and filmed. The drama is well-placed and you feel as if your part of the team and feeling everything they do.

I really found this movie to be good. Kurt Russell is great as Coach Brooks and he is supported by some great actors as his team and some of the sons of the actual players who won the game. This is a great sports drama, no Hoosiers but very, very close.

Miracle. Starring: Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich, and Sean McCann.

3 1/2 out of 5 Stars.

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