On its face, this looks to be just another float in the never-ending parade of Disney sports films, otherwise known as triumph without sweat: the Inspirational True Story, as so many of them are, of the hockey game that was more than a hockey game, when Team USA met Team USSR in the medal round at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. In short, Rocky on skates -- and indeed the best the movie can do to illustrate the superiority of the Soviets on ice is to depict them as huge, glowering, and robotic (see Rocky 4), and forget about their fluidity and finesse.What lifts the movie well above the norm, however, and rescues it from its abundant clichés (the telephoto shot of the teammates in uniform striding shoulder to shoulder toward the camera, the slow-motion-happy action highlights, the freeze-frame final image of raised index fingers), is Kurt Russell's portrayal -- and screenwriter Eric Guggenheim's and director Gavin O'Connor's portrayal -- of the American coach, Herb Brooks, who would perish in a single-car accident not long after completion of the filming, and, as we are told in a printed coda, would never get to see it. Everything you could ask for, and more, is here: the benevolent despotism ("I'll be your coach, I won't be your friend"), the my-way-or-the-highway mentality ("I'm not looking for the best players.... I'm looking for the right players"), the angry locker-room tirade at intermission ("You guys are playing like this is some throwaway game up in Rochester!"), the grim undemonstrative ulcer-cultivating demeanor, the terrible checkered pants and sports jacket, the tunnel-visioned obliviousness to a pop-cultural phenomenon such as "the Coneheads," the suffering but supportive wife (indie queen Patricia Clarkson), the arcane strategizing, the well-detailed practice sessions, the repeated refrain to each of his new recruits -- "Who do you play for?" -- to which a satisfactory answer (after a lot of accurate but unsatisfactory answers: "University of Minnesota," "Boston University," etc.) finally and stirringly comes: "I play for the United States of America!" Russell enacts the part with a light Minnesota accent, nothing to touch off the giggles of Fargo, and always with sufficient reserve (that clipped, damped-down accent is a help) to ensure that the emotional payoff will be a jackpot: alone in the tunnel to the locker room after the game, he can at last let it all out, if only he knew how. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd