I know nothing about hockey but managed to learn a few things from watching this formulaic sports story.
One is that a goalie has to be extremely supple. He must be able to do splits comfortably. And there is an unsettling scene towards the end, just before Rob Lowe's penalty shot, when the goalie of the enemy team (that's the proper term) extends one ugly padded leg in one direction and kneels on the other, then slithers slowly back and forth in front of the net like a dangerous eel or serpent. He also apparently gets to wear a mask as threatening as he likes -- skulls, a mass of stitches, any design will do.
Another thing I learned is that hockey isn't all speed and skill with the stick. The teams, the referees, the coaches, the fans, are all allowed to stand back and not interfere with two players who have decided to duke it out, first with sticks, like Medieval jousters, then with bare fists like kids in a junior high school playground. The fight can last a long time, until one of the combatants hits the dirt, or rather the ice.
There's nothing much new about the plot. Lowe is a natural talent on the ice but must quit for a time during his rise to celebrity in order to overcome some personal demons and then return to become the star he was always destined to be.
He's only seventeen years old and gets hazed when he joins the Mustangs. But he makes a friend too, Patrick Swayze, who tells him that nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to playing in the rink. I figured Swayze at once for a paralyzing C-spine injury that would turn him into a mummy from the neck down. I almost got it right.
Then there's Racki, an ugly name for a gargantuan enemy player given to smashing members of the other team and playing dirty. I figured Lowe would wind up beating him to a pulp. Bingo.
Then there's Cynthia Gibb as the daughter of Lowe's manager, Ed Lauter. Lauter doesn't like the team even looking at her. But how could anyone not? She was a model at fourteen and is now the cutest, cleanest face on the screen since Sandra Dee, but less debauched than Sandra Dee always appeared, what with her Bayonne accent.
Gibbs' Dad and Gibbs' own reluctance to have her date a team member are soon overcome. The obstacle is perfunctory. We've already seen Lowe's manly chest and buns of steel, which are pretty revolting, but we get the merest glimpse of Cynthia Gibbs' far more graceful nudity. She can't act but it doesn't matter because Lowe can't act either. That doesn't stop them from being beautiful people.
Patrick Swayze, on the other hand, gives a convincing performance as an experienced player. I've always admired Swayze, a dancer, singer-songwriter, horse breeder, who trained at the Joffrey Ballet -- and was from Texas. Died a way we don't want to die.
Best performance award goes to -- envelope, please -- Eric Nesterenko as Lowe's Dad. It's not a bravura performance. It's a reassuring one. He has the same sympatico quality on screen that Richard Farnsworth once had, or that Werner Herzog has now. If I were to spill the beans to someone, I wouldn't mind if the listener were someone like Nesterenko. Of course that's his screen persona. In real life he may get his kicks pulling the wings off flies.
This isn't any masterpiece of film making. You can pretty readily call the shots. But it's better than I'd expected it to be, which may or may not be saying much since my expectations were pretty low to begin with.
One is that a goalie has to be extremely supple. He must be able to do splits comfortably. And there is an unsettling scene towards the end, just before Rob Lowe's penalty shot, when the goalie of the enemy team (that's the proper term) extends one ugly padded leg in one direction and kneels on the other, then slithers slowly back and forth in front of the net like a dangerous eel or serpent. He also apparently gets to wear a mask as threatening as he likes -- skulls, a mass of stitches, any design will do.
Another thing I learned is that hockey isn't all speed and skill with the stick. The teams, the referees, the coaches, the fans, are all allowed to stand back and not interfere with two players who have decided to duke it out, first with sticks, like Medieval jousters, then with bare fists like kids in a junior high school playground. The fight can last a long time, until one of the combatants hits the dirt, or rather the ice.
There's nothing much new about the plot. Lowe is a natural talent on the ice but must quit for a time during his rise to celebrity in order to overcome some personal demons and then return to become the star he was always destined to be.
He's only seventeen years old and gets hazed when he joins the Mustangs. But he makes a friend too, Patrick Swayze, who tells him that nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to playing in the rink. I figured Swayze at once for a paralyzing C-spine injury that would turn him into a mummy from the neck down. I almost got it right.
Then there's Racki, an ugly name for a gargantuan enemy player given to smashing members of the other team and playing dirty. I figured Lowe would wind up beating him to a pulp. Bingo.
Then there's Cynthia Gibb as the daughter of Lowe's manager, Ed Lauter. Lauter doesn't like the team even looking at her. But how could anyone not? She was a model at fourteen and is now the cutest, cleanest face on the screen since Sandra Dee, but less debauched than Sandra Dee always appeared, what with her Bayonne accent.
Gibbs' Dad and Gibbs' own reluctance to have her date a team member are soon overcome. The obstacle is perfunctory. We've already seen Lowe's manly chest and buns of steel, which are pretty revolting, but we get the merest glimpse of Cynthia Gibbs' far more graceful nudity. She can't act but it doesn't matter because Lowe can't act either. That doesn't stop them from being beautiful people.
Patrick Swayze, on the other hand, gives a convincing performance as an experienced player. I've always admired Swayze, a dancer, singer-songwriter, horse breeder, who trained at the Joffrey Ballet -- and was from Texas. Died a way we don't want to die.
Best performance award goes to -- envelope, please -- Eric Nesterenko as Lowe's Dad. It's not a bravura performance. It's a reassuring one. He has the same sympatico quality on screen that Richard Farnsworth once had, or that Werner Herzog has now. If I were to spill the beans to someone, I wouldn't mind if the listener were someone like Nesterenko. Of course that's his screen persona. In real life he may get his kicks pulling the wings off flies.
This isn't any masterpiece of film making. You can pretty readily call the shots. But it's better than I'd expected it to be, which may or may not be saying much since my expectations were pretty low to begin with.