Miracle (2004) review

Today on Rhode Island Movie Corner, we’re celebrating the 40^th anniversary of one of the most iconic moments in not only the history of sports but also the history of the entire United States. On February 22^nd, 1980, the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team played against the Soviet Union Men’s Hockey Team at the 13^th Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. At the time, the Soviet Union squad was one of the most dominant forces in Olympic history and had taken the Gold Medal in 5 of the last 6 Olympic Games. But against all odds, coach Herb Brooks’ squad of amateur/college players pulled off the impossible and defeated the supposedly unbeatable Russians 4-3 on route to a historic Gold Medal run. This moment in history would forever become known as the ‘Miracle on Ice’ and provided a jolt of national pride that America was arguably quite lacking at the time. But now this brings us to the 2004 film adaptation of this historic event, simply titled Miracle. Released by Disney and directed by Gavin O’Connor, the film was a solid success both critically and commercially upon its release. It grossed over $64 million worldwide and scored good reviews with critics, and even nowadays, I find that many people still regard this as one of the best sports films of all-time. Unlike the actual Miracle on Ice, 2020 doesn’t connect to any specific anniversary for this film, but it did celebrate its 15^th anniversary last year. Thus, I figured that now is the perfect time to celebrate an undisputed classic of the sports film genre; a film that flawlessly works around its genre’s predictability to perfectly capture the spirit and emotion of the legendary game that it’s based around.

In the summer of 1969, University of Minnesota Ice Hockey coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) is hired as the new head coach of the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team. Brooks, who had previously played on the 1960 squad but was cut right before their Gold Medal run at the Olympics that year, proposes that the only way they can defeat the unstoppable force that is the Soviet Union’s hockey team is by changing their strategies and the ways that they practice. However, Brooks’ radical ideas are initially met with skepticism by the members of the United States Olympic Committee, especially after he ends up selecting the initial 26-man roster on the first day of what was meant to be a week-long tryout session. Nevertheless, Brooks sticks to his guns and selects a team made up of amateur and college players, including players from Boston University and several who had previously played for Brooks at the University of Minnesota. The only problem, however, is that Boston and Minnesota are responsible for one of the fiercest rivalries in college hockey, and sure enough, that hostility starts to become an issue once the team gets on the ice. However, Brooks manages to work around this by implementing a strict training regime that pushes the players to their limits so that he can properly instill in them the values of playing hockey for the United States of America. And in the process, the team starts to come together as they head to Lake Placid, where they find themselves becoming the catalysts behind a newfound sense of national pride as they brace themselves for the inevitable battle with the Soviets.    

As I alluded to in the intro, sports films can often get dinged for having predictable plots that usually revolve around a team that’s established as being major underdogs but end up winning the most important game of the season against their biggest rivals. This is especially the case for films that are based on true stories since there’s a very likely chance that audiences are well-aware about the history of events that they’re based on going into them. But while Miracle is quite arguably one of the most blatant examples of the latter since, let’s face it, we all know what happened on that fateful February day 40 years ago, this never hurts the film in any significant manner. A lot of this is thanks to how director Gavin O’Connor perfectly conveys the tumultuous atmosphere of everything that was going on in America at the time without ever shifting focus away from Herb Brooks and his team. Whether it’s the opening credits montage that covers events like the Three Mile Island incident and Watergate or a sequence where Herb’s wife Patti (Patricia Clarkson) diverts his attention to news on the developing hostage crisis in Iran, the film never shies away from how American morale was arguably at an all-time low. But just like in real life, the film does a wonderful job of building up to the climactic game against the Soviets and showing just how big of a deal it ended up being for the U.S. In fact, the attention to detail when it came to recreating this game is so authentic that legendary sportscaster Al Michaels didn’t even bother to re-record his iconic final words from the original broadcast (“DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES? YES!”). Why? Well, it was quite simply because he knew that he couldn’t even remotely come close to replicating the pure, unbridled emotion of that moment.

But, of course, the best aspect of this entire film is Kurt Russell’s phenomenal lead performance in the role of Herb Brooks. Russell fully commands the screen as the legendary hockey coach who pushed his team 24/7 to be the best that they can be. And yet, as much as the film focuses on the instances where he dishes out tough love to them like no one’s business, it also makes an effort to emphasize his humanity amidst all the pressure that he was clearly under to lead his team to victory. Much of this comes through in the scenes that he shares with Patricia Clarkson as Herb’s wife Patti who, despite her admittedly limited role as the generally passive ‘supporting wife’, does get to have a few instances where she keeps her husband in line when he starts to become too focused on his coaching responsibilities. After that, they’re backed by solid supporting players like Gavin O’Connor regular Noah Emmerich as Herb’s assistant coach Craig Patrick and Sean McCann as Walter Bush, the team’s general manager who also serves as Herb’s liaison when it comes to defending his actions to the U.S. Olympic Committee. As for the 20 men who made up the 1980 U.S. Men’s Hockey Team, the filmmakers primarily relied on casting actual hockey players in the roles. And while the film does tend to focus on some players more than others (namely, the quartet of goalie Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill), team captain Mike Eruzione (Patrick O’Brien Dempsey), defenseman Jack O’Callahan (Michael Mantenuto), and forward Rob McClanahan (Nathan West)), their overall camaraderie is outstanding.  

I still remember going to see this film in theaters back in 2004 when my family and I were on vacation in New Hampshire. I also remember a time in 2008 when, due to various reasons that range from having to do a school project on the ‘Miracle on Ice’ to just casually watching it at home on DVD, I ended up re-watching this film at least 3 or 4 times in the span of a month. In other words, just like another classic Disney sports film of the era, 2000’s Remember the Titans, Miracle is a film that I have quite a lot of history with, and upon re-watching it for this review, it’s easy to see why. Sure, it can be just as predictable as other films in the sports genre from a story perspective, but to be fair, this is the ‘Miracle on Ice’ we’re talking about. Thus, in this instance, it’s not a big deal that you already know the outcome of the film going into it because that’s not the point of it all. Instead, Miracle succeeds immensely thanks to excellent direction from Gavin O’Connor that perfectly conveys the historical importance of this legendary game and an unforgettable performance from Kurt Russell in the lead role of head coach Herb Brooks. I may not have been alive to witness the ‘Miracle on Ice’ in person, but this film more than does its job when it comes to authentically recreating such a spectacle on the big screen. And really, it doesn’t matter how many times you re-watch the actual game itself or this film’s interpretation of it as the climactic medal round matchup between the United States and the Soviet Union still stands as one of the most exhilarating finales in the history of sports films.   

Rating: 5/5!

The Accountant (2016) review

Recently Ben Affleck has been attracting quite a lot of buzz for his turn as Batman in the DC Extended Universe. Obviously when he was first cast, there was a fair amount of controversy surrounding the announcement as many felt that Affleck just wasn’t suited for the role of the legendary DC Comics superhero, especially after his arguably disastrous previous turn in the superhero film genre with 2003’s Daredevil. However, while the first DC film that he starred in, this year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, proved to be quite polarizing amongst critics and audiences, Affleck did receive rave reviews for his performance as an older and grizzled version of the Dark Knight. Thus, it’s safe to say that no matter how things turn out for the DCEU, Affleck certainly managed to prove many of the critics that initially doubted him wrong. So why am I bringing up Affleck’s recent work as Batman, you ask? Well that’s because his newest film, The Accountant, has him in a role that, in some ways, is kind of like Batman as he plays a character who could sort of be described as a ‘vigilante’ of some sorts. The film is brought to us by Gavin O’Connor, who in the past few years has been known for directing a pair of well-received sports films in 2004’s Miracle and 2011’s Warrior. And in this film, Affleck does deliver a very fascinating performance as a seemingly unassuming accountant with a background in military training. However, while Affleck does do a solid job in the lead role, the film ultimately hinders his performance due to its sluggishly slow pace.  

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a seemingly modest accountant operating a small accounting firm just outside of Chicago. However, for quite some time he has been pursued by the U.S. Federal Treasury, namely director of financial crimes Raymond King (J.K. Simmons) who ends up putting up-and-coming analyst Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) on the case (under threat of him exposing her criminal past) as he is about to retire, for getting involved with some of the biggest criminals in the world. As it turns out, Christian was diagnosed with autism as a child and was subsequently combat-trained for many years, primarily thanks to his father being a member of the military. Nowadays he spends much of his time operating as a forensic accountant for various criminal enterprises, with his assignments coming courtesy of a mysterious figure who he frequently communicates with known only as ‘The Voice’. One day, Christian takes on a legitimate accounting job for Living Robotics, a major robotics corporation run by CEO Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), and is tasked with investigating a supposed discrepancy in the company’s records. Christian, a math genius, figures out the problem almost immediately but this then puts him in big trouble as he must now go on the run along with Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), who was an in-house accountant for the company and the one who first discovered the discrepancy, from a group of assassins led by a mysterious figure named Braxton (Jon Bernthal) while also uncovering more of Living Robotics’ secrets.

From a technical perspective, The Accountant is, at the very least, a well-made film. The cinematography by Seamus McGarvey (Godzilla, The Avengers) is solid as is the editing during the action sequences. Plus, the score by Mark Isham, a frequent collaborator with director Gavin O’Connor, provides a suitably suspenseful aura throughout. However, the main thing that holds this film back is its overall pacing. Contrary to what the marketing might suggest, this is not an action-packed thriller. Sure, there are plenty of action sequences in this film but ultimately it’s more of a slow burn thriller as there are quite a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes. Because of this, it’s more of a character study than it is an action thriller and for the record that’s perfectly fine if this was the route that O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque were trying to go with in terms of the story. Ultimately, though, I feel that the ‘character study’ elements were perhaps just a tad bit overdone here. There are just some scenes that drag on for way too long, like this one big monologue from J.K. Simmons’ character over his connection to Christian Wolff. Scenes like this slow the film down in the worst possible way to the point where it sometimes even hinders the emotional complexity of certain character moments. And while the plot itself is admittedly a simplistic one, some parts of it just aren’t handled very well, like the whole thing about Medina having a criminal past, which poses a huge risk to her career with the government because she lied about it on her resume; a felony offense. This should be a major bit of character development for her but it ultimately never gets brought up again after the first scene between her and King. In other words, it becomes entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things.

Because this is centered on an autistic main character, I’ve heard that some may find the film to be rather offensive in terms of its portrayal of autism because it implies that this makes people who have autism the ‘perfect candidates’ for becoming assassins. So, if you’re offended by the film because of this implication, that’s totally understandable. However, I think that the film does do a pretty decent job in terms of handling the main character’s struggle with autism whenever it’s away from the action. At the very least, the film does succeed in regards to making Christian a sympathetic character, a trained badass for sure but one who finds that it’s difficult to make a lot of human connections. Overall, Affleck is solid in the lead role and he’s easily the film’s greatest strength. The rest of the cast is solid as well, though their roles in the film are minor at best when compared to Affleck. Anna Kendrick’s character is basically just along for the ride once she gets dragged into Christian’s situation. Still, Kendrick does work well with Affleck whenever they’re on-screen together. Jon Bernthal is also great as the character Braxton, who we learn has a major connection to Christian. It could very well be argued that said connection is a rather predictable plot twist but I will say that it is one of the ‘better handled’ plot-points of the story overall. Everyone else… is basically just there; J.K. Simmons, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor (who plays another criminally-tied accountant that Christian befriends while the two of them are in prison at one point), etc.

In short, don’t go into The Accountant expecting to see an action-packed thriller. Instead, it’s more of a ‘slow burn’ character study that focuses in on Affleck’s character and how he struggles with his autism. But while that part of the film is done well outside of the action sequences, especially thanks to Affleck’s solid performance in the role, the ‘slow burn’ pacing does prove to be quite a bit of a problem. Because the film is more dialogue-based than it is action-based, some scenes drag on for way too long, sometimes even to the point of hindering whatever emotions the plot was trying to convey. Bottom line, this film didn’t need to be over two hours long and could’ve benefitted from some tighter editing. Now again, if the intention was to make this film more of a character study than an action thriller, that’s fine. This could’ve been a nice subversion of the ‘action thriller’ genre. And from a technical standpoint, the film is at the very least well-made in terms of the action, music, direction, etc. Sadly, though, this turned out to be quite a disappointing affair, especially considering the talent involved both in front of and behind the camera.

Rating: 2.5/5