What do you get when you cross a sports documentary with a Russian spy thriller? Something pretty darn close to "Red Army," a fun, often riveting documentary about the juggernaut Russian national hockey team.
The film starts on a fun note, with star player Slava Fetisov, today a Russian politician, flipping director Gabe Polsky the finger. This starts the film off on the perfect note in a film that spotlights both the importance of, and the ridiculousness of, developing a monstrously good hockey team, then basing much of your national pride upon its success.
If you're any kind of hockey fan, or even a sports fan, you probably know that many of these players eventually found their way to the NHL and the riches that afforded, but it's the journey of how they got there that makes the story so noteworthy — backdoor dealings, political plays on the part of players and coaches (not to mention the politicians who got behind them) and the greed of the communist state that, you know, prides itself on being fair and equal to its people.
Yes, this is the team that had to suffer the indignity of being on the losing end of the Miracle on Ice, and we see the effect that crushing defeat had on them. We see the Russian government install a coach with little hockey experience (he was a military man) and see both how he built (read: destroyed) relationships with the players and undermined the program.
We see players get into tiffs, then, as the NHL comes calling, break off, some leaving with the permission of their motherland (read: offered a large chunk of their salaries), and others without (read: defected).
"Red Army" is, if nothing else, a fun, entertaining look at a pivotal time in the last 20 years politically shone through the prism of sports, which, of course, rose to become the economic powerhouse it is today right around that time. And that certainly is enough for one movie to be, but "Army" is a touch more, humanizing these people who were made into almost cartoonish villains during the nationalistic '80s in the waning days of the Cold War.
We see these Big Bads humanized as they see the American way of life and pine for it but don't want to let down their country. Fedisov is the team's captain and one of the first to make the trek to the NHL, and we see his unwavering insistence on keeping his salary actually working as he refuses to let the Soviet government dictate to him, even amid threats to him and his family.
It's a harrowing journey, a really fun documentary that, sports fan or not, you should go out of your way to see. It plays somewhat like an ESPN documentary, but "Red Army" has just a little something extra that makes it worthwhile.