The Miracle Worker

I would like to take this opportunity to, once again, express my great fondness for Kurt Russell. Who else, save he, could not only respectably wear the early-Eighties-Ted-Koppel hairdo that he displays in his new film, but make you forget it completely as he pulls off a performance so subtle and nuanced and assured that one might think it was, well, miraculous, especially coming from Kurt Russell?

But, odd as it may seem to say re: the guy who did 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND and ESCAPEs FROM NEW YORK and L.A., subtle and nuanced is what he does best; Kurt accomplishes with a look what most actors do with a page of dialogue. And while he does do a fair bit of schlock to pay the rent (and, I'm convinced, for sheer fun), he does it well enough to not embarrass himself, keeping enough of a sense of humor about it to make you feel he's in on the joke with you. What he's best with, though, is the role of the extraordinary ordinary man, the everyguy you'd never notice if he hadn't been dropped in the middle of an exceptional situation. The guy driving cross-country with his wife to start anew in California in BREAKDOWN; the solitary helicopter pilot just doing his time in a remote research station in THE THING. So it stands to reason that a movie like MIRACLE, whose whole raison d'etre is the ordinary-doing-the-extraordinary thing, would be the perfect place for Kurt to shine. Which he does.

And the movie shines right along with him, doing a great job of not only making what must be one of the least aesthetically-pleasing eras of American history, the early Eighties, visually interesting, but of making one of the most recycled cinematic sub-genres, the overcoming-the-odds sports flick, incredibly enjoyable and, even more surprisingly, moving. Yes, the crowd chants "U.S.A!" during the climactic final game, and yes, red, white, and blue are all present in abundance, and yes, this kind of overt patriotism should seem even more hackneyed than usual in these cynical times. But you're not in your cynical times; you're in 1980, and you're watching a group of college kids beat the legendary Soviet hockey team in the Winter Olympics, and you're seeing a crowd of people who haven't had much to cheer about lately joyously run for the ice, and you're noticing a tired, overwhelmed middle-aged hockey coach in the middle of it all, a guy who kind of resembles Kurt Russell, looking around wildly for his wife like a drowning man looking for a life preserver, and after he sees her, after he manages to convey seven months of pent-up emotion with a single look, walking into a deserted hallway so he can get a grip on what he's just done. Which is make history. Which is achieve his dream. Which is do the extraordinary with the ordinary. Which is what Kurt Russell happens to do best.