Miracle: Critic Reviews

Miracle's most concrete achievement is in showing how, step by demanding step, Brooks was able to transform 20 young men used to playing as stellar individuals -- the American way -- into an unintimidate-able, egoless team, i.e., the Soviet way.

This movie version of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team's Cinderella season does a yeoman's job of recycling the day-old dough that passes for its story.

Hockey fans should enjoy the movie, as will fans of the underdog.

The movie effectively simulates the game's whirl, and should grab all but the most finicky hockey fans. But for moviegoers who think if you've seen one sports flick, you've seen 'em all -- well, you've definitely seen this one.

The movie brings the audience back to 1980 with bone-crunching verisimilitude.

Miracle successfully aims to rouse a partisan crowd.

Russell is terrific as coach Herb Brooks.

I don't know that I've ever felt more involved in fictional competition than I was throughout this movie, and I can't tell a hockey puck from cow pie.

A worthy ride, especially if you're into sports.

Obviously, there's no suspense about the outcome, but Miracle manages to hold the viewer's interest by skirting most sports-flick cliches and focusing on character development and detail.

A wonderful docudrama of an undiluted great moment.

We know all the cliches of the modern sports movie, but Miracle sidesteps a lot of them.

An effective exercise in flag-waving nostalgia.

If you can tolerate all this phony uplift you'll also get a pretty interesting story about a shrewd Minnesota college coach named Herb Brooks.

A thrilling character study but only an average action flick.

You don't have to know a blue line from a soup line to appreciate Miracle. You'll end up cheering anyway.

Even for a Disney sports movie, this is a treacly affair, complete with an Armageddon-style hero shot that just screams manipulation.

[A] sure-fire crowd-pleaser.

A by- the-numbers re-telling of what Sports Illustrated dubbed the single greatest sports moment of the 20th century.

The best sports movie since Tin Cup.

[A] strenuously uplifting reactionary crowd pleaser.

The climax, a 20-minute dramatization of the crucial contest, lacks both suspense and poetry -- essentially, we're left to watch a clumsy recreation of a game whose outcome we already know.

Big on slogans, but low on personality.

Inspirational and uplifting.

What will make the film compelling even for audiences who never heard of the miracle on ice is Kurt Russell's taut, nuanced portrait of Herb Brooks.