Professor Pfinklepfunder's $1 Sunday Films
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
With Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Nathan West
Rated PG, 135 minutes
Kicking off our Winter Olympic movies is the story of the 1980 U.S. men's Olympic ice hockey team, who were a team of scrappy amateurs and college players led by unconventional coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell). They entered the tournament as longshots and certainly nowhere in sight of the dominant Soviet Union team, but miracles do happen from time to time. Miracle is also noted for casting actual hockey players, which allowed extended scenes of on-ice action uncommon in films that normally edit around actors' inabilities on the ice. (See, e.g., The Cutting Edge on March 15).