Mystery - New York: Ein Spiel um die Ehre

In Mystery, Alaska, hockey is the pride and joy of the residents of the small town. Their hockey game every Saturday is the greatest entertainment of the locals that are proud of their amateur team. When the reporter Charles Danner (Hank Azaria), who moved to New York many years ago, returns to Mystery by helicopter, he meets Mayor Scott Pitcher (Colm Meaney) and proposes a game against the powerful New York Rangers to be broadcast live. The captain of the team and sheriff John Biebe (Russell Crowe) is cautious and warns that the other team is professional and their team might become a national joke and destroy the proud of the locals. But Mystery challenges the Rangers and the Mayor invests money building a facility around the pond for the game. Meanwhile Charles rekindles the feelings of his former high- school sweetheart Donna Biebe (Mary McCormack), who is married with John with three children. While the hockey players live their daily problems and dramas, the Rangers call off the event bringing frustration to the population of Mystery. But the lawyer Bailey Pruitt (Maury Chaykin) travels to New York to defend the game in court and the challenge is scheduled. Who will win the game?

"Mystery, Alaska" is a surprisingly great film and certainly better than any viewer can expect. The storyline has many subplots, some of them funny but others dramatic. The cast is excellent and the hockey game is engaging. In the end, the hockey game is only the motive to see pleasant subplots. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Esquentando o Alasca" ("Heating the Alaska")

I had no idea at the time that I would enjoy a movie about hockey, and I was right, because this movie had nothing really to do with hockey.It's a great character based movie about a small town that makes it big and the reason the town makes it big is because of it's people. It's a great rocky type movie that makes you root for a small town and it's wonderful characters. Russell Crowe is excellent as well as the entire cast and a great turn by Burt Reynolds as the town judge and coach. This is a very well crafted, witty , warm and realistic and just a charming movie overall. Don't let the hockey fool you, this is a movie about people and a quite enjoyable movie I may add.

Not exactly for hockey, moral lesson, humor, performances. But for the lovely, realistic, sweet portrait of a place and its people. For the small incidents, friendship, jokes, sexual life, local pride and for Russel Crowe in his perfect role. It is a film about sport. But it has the science and courage to risk be more. A film about ordinary people front to a huge challenge. Giving the wise answer. A film about solidarity and force and love. And , sure, about local patriotism. In beautiful manner.

The preview for this movie does not give the audience enough of an idea of how well this movie actually plays out. Russell Crowe is not just an ill-mannered detective from Los Angeles, or a Gladiator from ancient Rome; no, in Mystery, Alaska, he showed that he indeed has a nurturing, almost lovable side to him. Mystery is a small, quiet town located smack dab in the middle of Alaska. It is a town where hockey is the most important thing in their lives. There are special "Saturday Games" where the town's Mayor, and two other board members select a few townsfolk to play against each other for the enjoyment of the other townspeople. When an article about this town and their hockey playing is published in Sports Illustrated, The NHL decides that the N.Y. Rangers would play an exhibition game in Mystery, Alaska for a little publicity.

Throughout this movie, the people of Mystery band together and eventually play their game against the Rangers.... This movie is well worth the $3.79 to rent, if you weren't one of the lucky ones to see it in the theater. As much as I enjoyed this movie, there was one scene which was a little reminiscent of Varsity Blues. The acting is wonderful, and I think that everyone that gives this movie a chance will appreciate the great story.

This movie is easy to bash because of its "underdog" formula, but this is one of the better spins I've ever seen put on it.

Mystery, Alaska is a small, ice-covered town that no one would ever have heard of were it not for former resident Charles Danner's (Hank Azaria) article on the "Saturday game" of hockey that has become a ritual in the town. Danner sings the town's hockey praises, likening their skating ability to that of "any team in the NHL," and the gods of fiction hear the call, arranging for an exhibition game between the New York Rangers and the Mystery players. This sets off storms of conflict and multiple subplots which give this film a depth normally not found in the genre. The hockey game itself is almost an afterthought, because while the players know how to play the game, they don't have the same mastery over their daily lives.

John Biebe (Russell Crowe) is the town sheriff and involuntarily-retired player from the Saturday game who is called upon to return to the team as their coach and as a player. His wife, Donna (Mary McCormack), is proud of the life she has built and slightly wistful about what the rest of the world would have held for her, but is content with what she has and does not live with her head in the clouds. Burt Reynolds is excellent as town judge Walter Burns, who must grapple with his teenage children, one of each gender, with the boy lacking the ambition Walter has for him, and the girl being a little too ambitious for his taste with her boyfriend. Colm Meany is the town Mayor who must deal with marital conflicts, and the remaining characters are what you'd expect to find in a closely-knit small town.

The game itself is more like something out of "The Air Up There" than any of the movies mentioned in the other reviews. In that movie, the Africans played basketball for much the same reason as the Mystery boys play hockey, and as in that movie, the talent pool from the area is rich enough for the pros to take more than a passing look at the players (two of the Mystery players wind up signing with the Rangers and playing for their minor-league outfit in Binghamton).

The players' main worry is that they'll get blown out by the Rangers, and shatter their illusions about their talent, but since the game is held on "their pond," where they believe "nobody beats them," they weren't about to back down. The Rangers, at first reluctant opponents who would rather have had some time with their families, get an early wake-up call in the game that causes them to remember why they played hockey in the first place, and take the game as seriously as a Stanley Cup final from then on. It is then that we see that while the Mystery players may lack the polish of the NHL, they are hardly outclassed.

As expected, the Zamboni makes a cameo, as does Mike Myers as a former player/announcer. The movie has the usual small-town hostility towards outsiders, including some ribald swipes at a female TV reporter, but throughout the movie, we see what makes this town tick, and how their commitment to hockey is one that every professional player should never lose. Sports may be a business, but in the end, the play is the thing, and this movie makes that point better than many of the better-known films that try to drive home the same point.