Red Army
Director:
Gabe Polsky
Year: 2014
Rating: 7.0
When I was growing up in the 1950's and 60's I hated the Soviet Union and
the Communists. I had a map on my wall with all the Communist nations in deep
red. I used to read in the Atlas about yearly steel and coal production statistics
in the Soviet Union and compare it to ours. During the Olympics I would count
up medals won by Communist nations and those by the good guys. At 10 years
old. I was living in D.C. during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961 and can
recall how nervous my folks were. Propaganda was much more obvious and overt
in the USSR and China but we had our share of it as well in TV shows and
movies, our national discourse, pledging to the flag every day, getting under
the desk in school to prepare for a nuclear bomb. They were the enemy and
every one knew it back then. They still are but clearly not everyone knows
it anymore. It turned out as I later realized that all those production numbers
were phony and many of the athletes were using drugs to make them stronger
and faster - especially the women who looked like linebackers.
But there was one thing for sure that everyone knew - the USSR had the best
ice hockey players in the world - not even close. When they came over to Canada
in the 1970's to play the Canadian national team and then individual teams
they blew everyone out. They had what is considered by experts to have had
the best team ever with Alex Kasatanov, Viktor Tikhonov, Vladislav Tretiak,
Igor Larionov, and Slava Fetisov. All of them heroes back home. The Red Army
ice hockey team was the best for 20 years - except for one day in February
1980. Not on that day. Things were particularly tense between the USA and
the USSR due to their invasion of Afghanistan just a few months previously.
We were to boycott the Summer Olympics later that year. But on that day in
February in Lake Placid New York a highly overmatched group of college hockey
players beat the best in the world for the Olympic Gold. It is still to this
day the only hockey game I have ever watched!
The documentary goes through all of this and more - the intense training
they went through - 11 months in isolation training many hours every day;
the friendships; the thrill of victory and eventually the coming to America
as professional hockey players and the difficulties that entailed. Five of
them ending up playing for one team that won the Stanley Cup. Much of the
focus is on Slava Fetisov considered one of the greatest attacking defenseman
ever - he gave a lengthy interview - the other four not so much. Enjoyable
film even for someone like me who knows nothing about hockey.
