Red Army

You'll note that the only bad reviews so far are Canadian hockey fans upset that those too young to remember Russian Hockey dominance, will learn that Canada was never the defacto all Hockey rulers of the world as they like to claim. Fact is, Russia was the best in the world for quite some time. This is just a tough pill for Canadian hockey fans to swallow.

My only complaint is the interviewer did come off as amateurish and disrespectful. Outside of that, I thought the film was very introspective with lots of old footage of the former USSR. Excellent interviews. And to the guy complaining about no Tikhonov interview, it clearly stated at the end of the film that Tikhonov declined an interview request.

This is an excellent documentary. If you can put your patriotic homerism aside and respect it for what it is, you will enjoy it.

There has never been such beauty in sport than ice hockey performed by the Soviet Union at its best. How was it possible? It's pretty obvious that it all was due to propaganda reasons. The Communist human was superior, according to Soviet leaders. Or at least they wanted to think so; but the almost only way to prove it was through the athletes.

The legendary Fetisov tells most of the story here. How the players were kept almost as slaves under the regime of KGB man Tichonov. And when finally the Soviet system broke down, Fetisov and his comrades were allowed to play in NHL. But had to give most of their money to the embassy.

A sometimes breathtaking documentary and the system succeeded in creating some of the best athletes ever. And yes, they impressed the West. But the price was high.

Sometimes sports can seem like they have a bloated sense of self-importance but it can resonate in the grand scheme of geopolitics. The Cold War was indeed an era of tension and it manifested itself most publicly when the Soviet Union brought its teams to North America. It wasn't just teams representing countries, but they were representing ways of life - America, the capitalist way of life, and the Soviet Union, the communist way of life. And ostensibly, those lifestyles determine who has the better players, at least that's what they wanted the teams to think. When you hear that a country has beaten Canada at hockey, you know that means business. However, the documentary Red Army shows how the Soviet Union team members, who are all world class athletes, become disenchanted with their leadership and are recruited over to American leagues.

As expected, the attitude of the Russians today in the interviews are amusing and intimidating. Director Gabe Polsky feeds off the candid moments he captures, even if that results in the participants condescending him. With very deliberate motions with the camera, he capitalises on moments that other directors would have considered an outtake. There's a sense of humour and a sense of danger constantly bubbling, and Polsky's collection of archive footage always perfectly illustrates the portrait that the anecdotes form. It shows a skill in hockey that I've never seen before and Polsky makes it quite poetic at times. However sometimes its drama is too boisterous, but it's only real crux is that with such a big team it's hard for it to stay focused and follow all its characters at once. While it's most likely drenched in bias coming from an American, but pushing politics aside, it's the individual lives that matter.

8/10

When we first meet Viacheslav Fetisov in the opening scene of "Red Army", he rather surprisingly gives his interviewer the middle finger. He's not going to be hurried - he's already seen everything; been everywhere and done it all to be rushed by some kid from California (or was it Chicago?) making a documentary about ice hockey. If he has to sort out some personal business by way of a phone call before he gets into the nitty-gritty of his life story, then he will.

This is all before he has even uttered a word of genuine substance. By the time he has stopped speaking, and the film has ended with his life as it was in aftermath of the 2014 Winter Olympics, we have surely been moved by a quite stupendous narrative depicting one man's journey through the very heart of the Russian ice hockey system at a time when it was looked upon by the Communist ideologues in the 1970's and 80's as a bulwark for internationalist reputation.

There is not, of course, any correlation between sporting success and kind; prosperous societies which are worth living in, but it is, as George Orwell once attempted to convey in a work which unfolded in a mock-USSR setting, the case that something certainly becomes true when enough people believe it - irrespective of whether that thing is true in reality.

Despite their terrifying nature, societies (and films about these societies) along the lines of the Soviet Union are, for whatever reason, often morbidly fascinating - more so once we know they have disbanded and can gawp on in awe at what life was like within them: don't tell me you've never found a documentary about Nazi Germany absorbing, or even more recently a programme about a television crew who were escorted around North Korea by government supervisors. "Red Army" is, in one sense, a piece along these lines, but it is predominantly more interested in the historical story of the development of Russian ice hockey to such an extent it became all but invincible, and the aftershock of the programme which it had on other ice hockey playing nations.

Going on what I read from those who lived there, the Soviet Union was not a good place to be: people were poor, but power brought you the privilege of a nice apartment and good healthcare; government officials were corrupt and could be bribed quite easily. The skylines were desolate and grey, scarred by buildings beyond repair. It was a society of lies and corruption, not one of peace; love; progress and equality. Its saddest story is the tale of young Pavlik Morozov, who grassed to the Stalinist authorities the fact his parents were hoarding grain. His parents were killed, and a statue went up in a town square of the boy who was seen as an example to all. The odd nature of the country and how its rulers secretly knew it was a bad place to be is nicely captured via a short story therein the documentary, which recalls how KGB agents would confiscate the passports of hockey players in order to prevent defections once they had arrived at their foreign destination. Why would anyone want to defect from the Soviet paradise?

The country's ice hockey, however, eventually became second to none and "Red Army" is the retrospective documentation of the process which had this come to be; a quite brilliant voyage through the Soviet system told from the perspective of many of the players involved in the team in conjunction with one or two supporting acts who played witness to the whole thing. Agonisingly, we are robbed of input from Viktor Tikhonov, the coach of the Soviet team whose team waltzed to so many gold medals and whose nerves must have been shredded every match as the weight of both his nation's ideology and standing bear down on him. Agonisingly, he died shortly after the release of the documentary anyway.

The documentary is expertly put together by, of all people, an American by the name of Gabe Polsky, who depicts how no one had played ice hockey before what the USSR brought to the game in the 1970's. It depicts them using the somewhat obscure combination of the rhythm of ballet and the tactical nous of chess to create a team which blasts their way into greatness, winning the vast majority of their finals and seemingly spoiling the lofty opinions certain western powerhouses had of themselves in the process. Do not let the tough nature of the sale put you off - this combination of the Soviet Union and ice hockey wrapped up into a documentary package works really well.

Director Gabe Polsky uses his debut documentary Red Army to explore perhaps one of the most intriguing stories of hockey that has ostensibly swept under the rug in the modern day. Polsky tells the story of the Soviet Union's hockey team during the Cold War. He uses the captain of the Soviet's hockey team known as HC CSKA Moscow Viacheslav "Slava" Fetisov to paint the picture of an unstoppable hockey team that practiced ruthlessly and was kept under less than adequate conditions by their dictator of a coach.

Right of the bat, Fetisov is a cantankerous presence, thoroughly unpleasant to the audience and Polsky, going as far as to flip off Polsky whilst he plays on his phone in the middle of an interview. However, Fetisov finally gets the intriguing story out of him that we came for. He tells of a time when the Soviet Union selected hockey as the country's sport and how numerous young children would stand in line for hours on end to try out for the Soviet teams. The USSR was about unity and people saw hockey as a way to unite everyone through the spirit of a team and the desire to win at all costs.

The HC CSKA Moscow, better known by their name of the "Red Army," was a meticulously coached and organized team. Archival footage showing practices and actual games show a team hellbent on executing strategy, with slick, blink-and-you-miss-it puck passing amongst players, even in the tightest situations. One of Polsky's angles in the film is how there is a contrast between American hockey and Soviet hockey and that contrast is evident just by looking at a few clips of the Red Army in action. Where the Red Army was concerned with maintaining puck possession in the toughest situations, American hockey finds itself often preoccupied with checking and fighting.

The Red Army was coached by Viktor Tikhonov, the aforementioned ruthless coach. No player featured in Red Army has a particularly kind word to spare for Tikhonov, all of whom reflecting on some of his most frighteningly strict and demeaning moments. One player recalls how he wouldn't let a teammate visit his dying father back home, and another reflects on how players urinated blood because Tikhonov worked them so hard. Tikhonov believed in a dictatorship when it came to coaching hockey; he was also worried about players defecting or abandoning allegiance to the USSR in favor of playing for the NHL. If Tikhonov thought one of his players was planning to jump ship, no matter how skilled they were, he would cut them and blacklist them from hockey, all but guaranteeing they'd never get an opportunity to play in the NHL.

Those who did get the fortunate opportunity to play in the NHL, thanks to their unbelievable talent and skill, like Fetisov, a nineteen-year-old rookie named Alexandr Mogilny, and the talented center Sergei Fedorov, found themselves under an unrealistic amount of scrutiny for their decision. Fetisov, in particular, had to jump through a series of hoops in order to land the spot on the roster of the New Jersey Devils. Devils' manager Lou Lamoriello had granted an immense signing bonus to Fetisov but the Soviet Union refused to give up one of their most dynamic players. The Soviets saw players jumping ship for the NHL as a victory for the west and a grand loss for the USSR.

Red Army does a fine job at exposing the blurred line of sports and politics, showing how during the Cold War era, the two worked in conjunction with one another quite brazenly. Polsky works to keep this documentary on topic, although in only eighty-four minutes, and admittedly a great deal of ground to cover and characters to profile, it's difficult for Polsky to hit all his targets with complete development. It almost feels like this runtime was set before the documentary even began filming and he was prohibited from going over by even a minute. Still, this is a hearty documentary that houses a great deal of personality in its depictions of contrasting views and politics of the same sport and how politics itself got involved in a sport and resulted in a messy ordeal for many involved.

Directed by: Gabe Polsky.