Le feu sur la glace

WOW, I always thought I was strange for watching this movie 14 times in one day when I was 16. I have a feeling most of you are women, I'm a man and I think this movie is one of the best Rom/Com I've EVER seen. Never mind the fact that it's pretty much an adaptation of Shakespeare's"Taming of the Shrew" The chemistry is spot on between the cast. There was a girl like Kate's character that I was madly in love with at the age of 16. We bickered just like the two leads of this film. This film was my "light and the end of the tunnel". Alas, it was not to be. When I finally confessed, my best friend told me "Never..." Why can't life be like the movies.....

As a figure skater, my movie choices of my profession are rather limited. If you take out Ronin, in which Katarina Witt is shot, Ice Castle, which I hated, the Cutting Edge is practically the only one left. I loved it. Sure the movie wasn't realistic, but it was good none the less. Wholesome and the skating sequences weren't bad. I loved the Pamchenko. My parter and I even attempted it a few times. Overall, definitely watch this if you are a fan of skating or just have an afternoon to watch a movie. I've seen it more than 20 times...this movie is timeless. My coach plays clips from this movie to us when we are waiting for our turn to compete and even at the celebration parties. I love it.

It's the 1988 Winter Olympics at Calgary. Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) is a promising hockey player, but his career is cut short by an eye injury. Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) is a spoiled temperamental pairs figure skater who goes through every partner. Then 2 years later, Moseley still can't find a partner, and Dorsey can't find a team. Her coach Anton Pamchenko decides to put them together despite their combative relationship.

They have good chemistry together. Their combative nature is the perfect heat for a relationship. It is a fundamental building block to a good rom-com. That's what we have here. Two perfectly match solid actors doing a good rom-com. Moira Kelly has the perfect indignant pout, and Sweeney has a great sly smirk.

I was twelve years old when I saw this film. Then, I thought it was great. Now, at twenty-one, I think it's awesome. Some may criticize the "inaccuracies" of the skating, but if one looks closely at the credits, world renowned skater Robin Cousins is the technical advisor and skating scene coordinator. Also, the pairs skaters they compete against are also, as far as I can tell, are real skaters. While they probably wouldn't jump into major competitions right away, they did it this way most likely for timesake. It's a sweet love story that is refreshingly free of violence (save the occasional slapshot), gratutious sex, and vulgar language. It is a delight for young and old combining chemestry, believability, and awesome skating sequences. I give it a nine and a half out of ten; if for nothing else, then for the warm fuzzies you get from watching it.

Take a handsome young ex-hockey star who could never do much other than skate, a prima-donna figure-skater who finds fault with every world-class partner thrown her way and laughs at said ex-hockey star, and an obligatory crazy-genius Soviet expatriate, send them all after Olympic glory, and you have The Cutting Edge.

Lead characters Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) and Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) are star-crossed skaters: an eye injury at the Olympics ruined Doug's hockey career, while an ill-timed fall in the pairs figure skating finals leaves Kate's destiny unfulfilled. Coach Anton Pamchenko (Roy Dotrice) fishes Dorsey out of a construction site and transplants him to the Moseley estate in Greenwich. The fish-out-of-water concept was not as blatant as Pauly Shore's movies, but it was definitely there.

The stereotypical supporting cast did its job: Terry O'Quinn is the wealthy, doting father who is either obsessed with an Olympic medal for his daughter, or obsessed with his daughter who happens to want an Olympic medal (the movie never really makes clear which), while snobby fiancé Hale Forrest (Dwier Brown) is forgettable yet necessary to the plot, as is Walter Dorsey (Chris Benson), Doug's stereotypical nuts-and-bolts, slightly homophobic and very skeptical brother.

With Breakfast Club-like cost-efficiency, the film sticks to the dialogue between the few main characters, who are on screen for the large majority of the film. The questions are timeless: will Kate marry her snobby fiancé or will passion erupt from the love-hate relationship with her skating partner? Will they overcome the judging bias against ex-hockey players and win gold? Will Kate loosen up? Will Doug gain some culture and refinement? One could say that this film is predictable, but that is a good thing. Films like The Cutting Edge lose very little even if you've heard the story told a hundred times in a dozen ways. Suspense is not the goal here; romance is, and this film serves up more of it than almost every media-hyped "blockbuster" I've ever seen.