Customer Rating: 
Summary: Rousing, 'come from behind" hockey movie
Comment: I am not a sports fan. Period. I'll watch the occasional few minutes of Michael Jordan in a tense playoff or a fantastically close Super Bowl on occasion, but beyond that, I have no interest.
I do find few movies about the fanatics who drives themselves to excel interesting or the fanatics who drive people to excel, to go far beyond what they themselves thought possible.
That's what "Miracle" is all about, a coach named Herb Brooks who drove a group of mostly collegiate hocky players to fuse into an Olympics winning team, trumping the Soviets, who had won four consecutive championships.
Kurt Russell plays Herb Brooks. What we see is a narrow, driven man who has only one goal: to produce an Olympics winning hockey team through his coaching. And Russell conveys that image beautifully, leaving us with an impressiona of a guy we probably wouldn't want to spend any time with (and, likewise, we would be of no interest to him) who ignored his family and browbeat 20 some kids into submission until they became a functioning team.
It's a great movie about a coach. The players, as they were in the real incident, were submerged to the coach's will and ego. The hockey scenes are exciting. I don't know enough about hockey to comment on their authenticity and, frankly, I don't care.
In the end, it is the story of a driven, selfish man demanding that his recruits obey his every order and become, to a large extent, automatons until they fuse into a single whole, a team. Look closely and you will see the techniques of every successful army since the beginning of time: slavish obediance while preserving the capability to make individual decisions. It worked for Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, George Patton and Herb Brooks, when he applied it to hockey.
A lot of the film centers on rah-rah American patriotism which needed a boost after feckless Presidency of Jimmy Carter who cancelled American participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics to "protest" the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is a nice feeling to see the United States portrayed positively in a Hollywood movie, for a change.
Overall, "Miracle" is an entertaining movie about an eccentric coach, the team he built and the results they acheived. Best of all, it's a true story.
Jerry
Customer Rating:
Summary: It Really Was A "Miracle"
Comment: What an amazing journey this team had. Herb Brooks is one of the greatest people who ever lived, not to mention an incredible hockey coach! This movie was such a fine recollection of the team, the work they did and the sheer glee that was felt nationwide when the did the impossible...great story, great movie.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Miracle
Comment: One of the most motivating films ever created. I used it to teach teamwork concepts to the team leaders at work. We spent over 5 hours watching, stopping, discussing and digesting the approach. It was full of enough drama to hold everyone's attention.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: History lesson.
Comment: Miracle starring Kurt Russell is based on the U.S. Hockey team who won the gold medal at the Winter Olymic Games in Lake Placid. Good film and acting but this film is a bit too long and indulgent. Patricia Clarkson also stars, she is a very smart actress to say the least. If you like inspiring sport films than Miracle shall make your day, enjoy!
Customer Rating:
Summary: And they used the original sound track...
Comment: There a lot of great reviews out there for what is one of our top favorite flicks, but I don't seem to see what I thought was a great part of the production. I recently bought the video of the original game...which I can remember seeing like it was yesterday. We were shocked to find that the sound track from the original broadcast was used 100% in the movie, not an easy trick because the action then had to match what the announcers had said. This makes for a surprisingly real reproduction. And the Russian coach in the movie is dead ringer for the real guy who has to be seen to be appreciated.
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