2004 Movie Titles
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2004 Movie Titles
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Miracle
Starring: Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Nathan West, Eddie Cahill, Noah Emmerich
Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Screenplay by: Mike Rich, Eric Guggenheim
Release Date: February 6th, 2004
Running Time: 135 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG for language and some rough sports action.
Box Office: $64,378,093 (US total)
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
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Tagline: The Story Of The Greatest Moment In Sports History.
Kurt Russell stars as coach Herb Brooks in the story of how the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team toppled the seemingly invincible Soviet Union squad to capture the gold medal. A former U.S. player himself, Brooks was the last skater to be cut from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, the most recent one to win the gold medal before Brooks became the team coach.
He cobbled together a group of players and taught them to excel at the European game. Even so, the Russian team had won four consecutive gold medals and was so good that it defeated a team of National Hockey League all-stars. The U.S. team wasn't expected to even make the medal rounds. But led by Brooks, the team defeated the Soviet Union in the semifinal round, then bested Finland in the finals to win the gold.
Based on the exciting true story of one of the greatest moments in modern history, “Miracle” is the inspiring story of the team that transcended its sport and united a nation with a new feeling of hope. In 1980, the United States Ice Hockey team’s coach, Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), challenged a ragtag squad of college kids to take on the awesome juggernaut from the Soviet Union – the greatest hockey team in the world – at the Olympic Games.
Despite the long odds, Team USA carried the pride of a nation yearning for a distraction from world events. With the world watching, the team rose to the occasion, prompting broadcaster Al Michaels’s nowfamous question to the millions viewing at home: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
About the Production
“It’s important to understand the social and political climate of the country back in 1980,” says Gavin O’Connor, director of Walt Disney Pictures’ exciting and uplifting motion picture, “Miracle.” “Our psyche was fractured.
We were a nation feeling really sorry for ourselves. Long gas lines. High interest rates. The hostage crisis. No summer games. We were desperate for something to wrap our arms around, anything to offer us hope. And then, out of nowhere, come these 20 kids.”
The story of the 1980 US Ice Hockey team’s underdog victory against a Soviet juggernaut in the Olympic Games, “Miracle” is the story behind the game that has been immortalized by sportscaster Al Michaels’s famous line, “Do you believe in miracles?”
“These players really inspired the country,” says producer Gordon Gray, who, with partner Mark Ciardi, also produced Disney’s 2002 hit, “The Rookie.” “People really forget what things were like that winter. It was a time when America was simply feeling low about its abilities, and then here come these kids against a squad of Goliaths… You play that game a hundred times, and maybe the Soviets win ninety-nine. But they didn’t win that one, and that made all the difference in the world.”
“Gordon and I are drawn to inspirational stories,” says Ciardi. “To me, there is no more inspirational story than this one. It was voted by Sports Illustrated as the single greatest sports moment of the 20th century. These players are iconic. It’s an honor to be able to tell their story, and it’s a perfect time to tell it.”
“We’d wanted to do a movie about the Miracle on Ice, but we didn’t really know how we’d tell it,” says Gray. With a moment so strong in memory, the producers and director wanted to make sure they got it right. Indeed, the Team USA’s victory over the Soviets remains a pivotal moment in the country’s cultural history – one of those moments where every sports fan remembers where he or she was when it occurred.
“I was a freshman at the University of Maryland,” says Ciardi, “I was on the top bunk and my roommate and I were watching the game on a little black-and-white TV. The whole place was going bananas – everybody was glued to the game. It was on tape delay, but nobody knew the score – not like today, where you can find out in two seconds on the internet.”
“My son was born in February, 1980 – I remember watching the games at the hospital, at the house,” says Kurt Russell, who stars in Walt Disney Pictures’ the film as the team’s coach, Herb Brooks.
“But the game where they beat the Russians – I was at my brother-in-law’s house, and we watched the game together. We were both longtime hockey fans, and both played some in the net, but after that game, we became obsessed.”
“Herb Brooks was a hockey egghead, a mad scientist, and the team was his lab experiment,” notes O’Connor. “He basically rewired the boys’ brains to learn a new style of play – a fusion of the Soviet school with the best of the Canadian and European school – in such a short amount of time. No one thought it was possible but Herb. The team’s success was the result of a group of kids who were willing to trust in Herb’s plan and push themselves far outside the norm. The sadness of it all was Herb’s determination to sacrifice any personal relationships with the team to gain the results he was after.”
“Brooks had his eye on the game against the Russians from the very beginning,” says Russell, who plays Coach Brooks. “He realized right away that to win the gold medal, Team USA would have to go through the Soviets, and he also realized that the formula they’d been using hadn’t been working. He coached his team to play for that game. It was a huge risk – if it didn’t work, it was going to be embarrassing.
“This film is about understanding that even though it’s called a miracle on ice, in fact, a lot of hard work went into the miracle,” says Russell.
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Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill) and captain Mike Eruzione (Patrick O'Brien Demsey), along with their teammates, are ready to face the Russians in Miracle.