Miracle Has Opened. Finally.

It’s playing in Times Square. This is definitely one of the movies I must go to see alone – because it already means too much to me – and if it’s a disappointment, I need to skulk away, on my own, to heal.

But if it’s a wonderful experience, then I need to be by myself to revel in it, and not ruin it all by talking with someone who may not feel the same way.

Now I just have to figure out when the hell I can go. I’m going to an Irish music festival tonight – tomorrow I’m going to spend the afternoon at the Turkish baths (a hilarious experience – you sit in steam-rooms in your bathing suit for 5 bucks a pop, surrounded by old Eastern Europeans – it’s so much fun) with a couple of girlfriends, then going out for wine and cheese … Perhaps a matinee on Sunday.

Roger Ebert liked Miracle – and has good things to say about Kurt Russell’s performance … I liked this bit especially from the review:

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.

And this particular paragraph gives me a clue that this film attempted to get the story right, as opposed to Hollywood-izing it:

We know all the cliches of the modern sports movie, but “Miracle” sidesteps a lot of them. Eric Guggenheim’s screenplay, directed by Gavin O’Connor, is not about how some of the players have little quirks that they cure, or about their girl, or about villains that have to be overcome. It’s about practicing hard and winning games. It doesn’t even bother to demonize the opponents. When the team finally faces the Soviets, they’re depicted as — well, simply as the other team. Their coach has a dark, forbidding manner and doesn’t smile much, but he’s not a Machiavellian schemer, and the Soviets don’t play any dirtier than most teams do in hockey.

So the drama is big enough already. It does not need to be pumped up. We do not need to delve into Jim Craig’s psychological issues and torment over losing his mother. We need to see how he stepped up to the plate (to mix a metaphor) and played like a genius. It’s about the GAME, not the personalities.

This was my hope for this film.

And I’m thrilled to see Kurt Russell get a chance to do some character-acting. He has always been capable of it.

Ebert says:

Although playing a hockey coach might seem like a slap shot for an actor, Russell does real acting here. He has thought about Brooks and internalized him.

Beautiful. Can’t wait to see it.