Miracle (2004)
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
When college coach Herb Brooks is hired to helm the 1980 U.S. men's Olympic hockey team, he brings a unique and brash style to the ice. After assembling a team of hot-headed college all-stars, who are humiliated in an early match, Brooks unites his squad against a common foe: the heavily-favored Soviet team.
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What critics compared Miracle to
The film is reminiscent of the 1986 classic, Hoosiers , in which Gene Hackman's Norman Dale, an unemployed high school basketball coach, travels to the small town of Hickory , Indiana to teach a group of boys the fundamentals of basketball.
If you've seen it once, you've seen it a dozen times, even in classic sports movie like Hoosiers that get away with it: the rah-rah speeches, the tension as the team seems to fall apart, and the ultimate victory of the underdogs who overcome great obstacles to become champions.
Three that stand out are Downhill Racer (1969), Hoosiers (1986) and Eight Men Out (1986).
(O’Connor previously directed Miracle, about the ragtag U.S. hockey team that toppled the Soviet and Finnish titans at the 1980 Olympics).
Director Gavin O'Connor, who worked magic in the Herb Brooks hockey drama "Miracle," transforms this potential melodrama into a hard-hitting family saga.
The bedrock that makes Warrior such a great movie is the intelligent script by director Gavin O’Connor (Miracle), who takes many of the conventions of the standard fight film and tweaks them in ways that feel plausible.
For quite a while at the beginning of Warrior it seems this could be a kind of sports movie that does something bigger with the genre, more like David O. Russell's The Fighter than Gavin O'Connor's own Miracle.
Directed by Gavin O'Connor ( Miracle , Pride and Glory ) and featuring three of the best performances we're likely to see in theaters this year, Warrior avoids most sports movie cliches and delivers a powerful one-two punch of heart-wrenching drama and some of the most astounding fight sequences on film (although to be honest I watched many of them through the slits between my fingers as they were incredibly, realistically brutal).
It's this year's Miracle with a slightly better screenplay, and its success relative to that picture will speak volumes about race and demographics in this country.
The "real life" underdog story has recently run through ice hockey (Miracle) and football (Friday Night Lights).
You've seen all this before, and not just in Miracle and Friday Night Lights.
For his part, director Gavin O’Connor ( Miracle , Jane Got A Gun ) competently, unremarkably keeps the balls in the air.
The Accountant, which is directed by Miracle’s Gavin O’Connor and written by The Judge’s Bill Dubuque, reveals its backstory in slow, looping coils, as if in hopes that will hide how little sense it makes when straightened out.
Written by Bill Dubuque and directed by Gavin O’Connor (the heartfelt “Miracle”), “The Accountant” is a nifty piece of genre entertainment, its wacky edge and genial tone despite that body count coming as something of a pleasant surprise in a year rife with lumbering, over-amped blockbusters.
“The Accountant” was directed with style and vigor by Gavin O’Connor (“Warrior,” “Miracle”), a filmmaker capable of investing old formulas with fresh life.
And though — or perhaps because — director Gavin O’Connor shoots this strange October surprise full of the same scrappy, ball-swinging gravitas that he brought to the more grounded likes of “Miracle” and “Warrior,” it is still some very, very silly business.
But then this is the sort of stupid movie we've come to expect from Gavin O'Connor, who started off strong and indie with the femme-centric "Tumbleweeds" in 1999 and since then has turned out nothing but macho explosions – "Miracle," "Pride and Glory," "Warrior."