Miracle

Miracle , in which Kurt Russell plays hockey coach Herb Brooks, who assembled the victorious American hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics, is receiving cheers from most critics. The script, they agree, is mostly by-the-numbers for a sports film. Russell's performance, they suggest, is something else. Michael Sragow in the Baltimore Sun writes that it is so robust and true, so acute in its depiction of a complex, brilliant character and so immense in its understated sympathy that it brings new meaning to the overused word 'inspirational.' Carries Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer says it's the role of Russell's career. Russell's stunning performance, his most memorable star turn since he played Elvis in the 1979 telefilm, is one of poetry in motivation and understatement in overdrive, she writes. Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Daily News observes: Russell is turning into a true exception, a performer who is improving in a major way as he gets older and seems to relax more into his own skin. And Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News concludes that Russell is the small miracle in Miracle.