HOCKEY; Moments Frozen in Time Come to Life in 'Miracle' (Published 2004) (2024)

''Miracle,'' the new movie about the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, presented its filmmakers with a formidable challenge: faithfully recreate memorable action from an astonishing Olympic tale.

It remains a story that is part fantasy: how a team led by an enigmatic, close-mouthed coach, Herb Brooks, reversed years of failure by United States teams, beat the Soviet Union on the way to winning the gold medal and lifted the spirit of the country.

''How do you tell the greatest sports story of the past 100 years?'' said Mark Ellis, the film's hockey coordinator, and a veteran choreographer of sports sequences for numerous movies. ''You know when you do it, you'll have those 20 guys on the team and Herb Brooks and Al Michaels to answer to.'' Brooks died last August in an automobile accident.

What ''Miracle,'' which opens today and stars Kurt Russell as Brooks, creates is a kind of Lake Placid hyperreality: a re-creation close to the truth, but cinematically enhanced. The action is shot from tighter, lower camera angles than ABC Sports used 24 years ago.

The director, Gavin O'Connor, shot the hockey action with a six cameras that mimicked the television angles, but also with a camera that moved along the ice on a dolley and could move 360 degrees; with a hand-held camera used by a cameraman skating in and out of the action, and with a camera placed on wires over the ice.

The audio for the film is heightened so that fierce checks into boards sound like tiny earthquakes, and saves echo off goalie's pads. Goals shown by ABC from conventional camera positions high above the ice were filmed from just above the nets.

''I didn't want to shoot from the same exact angles as TV did,'' O'Connor said. ''A TV angle works in real life, but it's very boring in a movie.''

Although film technology improves how the hockey action is viewed in ''Miracle'' -- as ''Seabiscuit'' did by showing horse races from angles that television cannot -- an equally difficult task was to create teams to play as if they were Americans, Soviets, Finns and Czechs.

After hiring hockey-savvy consultants, conducting casting calls in six cities and running two tryout camps, Ellis and O'Connor picked the 75 men who would portray the players. Nearly all are nonactors with hockey backgrounds; three are experienced actors, like Eddie Cahill, who plays Jim Craig, the United States goalie. His sometime stand-in was Bill Ranford, who played 15 seasons in the National Hockey League. Cahill developed quickly as a goalie.

The 133 plays were translated onto storyboards, then computer-animated to let players see where checks had to be leveled, pucks passed and shots taken. ''The X factor was whether they would remember the plays,'' O'Connor said.

But the rigorous off-ice preparation proved only a blueprint for the reality of filming over 14 weeks in rinks in Vancouver, British Columbia.

''The play evolved until the last take,'' Ellis said. ''It evolved when we moved the camera, which meant we had to change the play a little and the start position of the kid. We kept fine-tuning it and fine-tuning it.''

O'Connor added: ''At times, it felt a little too choreographed, so we'd deconstruct it. The biggest problem is that hockey is so spontaneous that at times, the choreography was antithetical to what I wanted.''

He said he had to remonstrate defensem*n for not challenging passes by forwards. And he urged Ranford not to let a rival score even if the scene called for him to give up a goal. ''I told him, 'Don't let them score,' and told the actors playing the Soviets, 'You're supposed to score.' And Billy stopped the puck 8 or 9 times out of 10.''

Ellis said that two goals stood out as crucial in the film's quest for authenticity: Bill Baker's last-minute goal to tie Sweden in the team's first game of the Olympics, and Mike Eruzione's game-winner against the Soviets to win the first medal-round game.

''If you didn't get them right, why do the rest?'' he said.

As the puck is passed from Mark Pavelich (Chris Koch) to Baker (Nick Postle), it is seen in closeup, moving at a slowed-down speed; a quick cut behind the net shows the shot.

''Baker was just over the blue line, which isn't an easy shot,'' Ellis said. ''The puck floated across the ice for a while before anyone recognized Baker was going to take the shot. And Nick, who is a hockey player, fired a tremendous shot.''

Eruzione's goal was shot by ABC from above and behind the action, but on film, the camera was behind the net.

''The first take, my Soviet defender got too far to the left, and it deflected off him,'' Ellis said. ''On the second take, the Soviet goalie deflected a hell of a shot. The third one -- bam! -- he got every bit of it.''

He said the timing was crucial to put Patrick O'Brien Demsey, who plays Eruzione, on the ice at the right time. ''If Patty comes full blast off the bench, not three-quarters speed,'' he said, ''he's there too early and he misses the chance to be there when Pavelich digs the puck out.''

Eruzione and Mark Johnson, who scored two goals in the Soviet game, said the re-creations were accurate. ''It's tough to duplicate things to perfection, but they were good, real good, and the players were pretty decent skaters,'' said Johnson, now the head coach of the women's hockey team at the University of Wisconsin.

Eruzione, the director of development at the athletic department of Boston University, said: ''They nailed it. It was right there. He shot it at the right time and it hit the right spot.''