''Red Army'' is a 2014 American-Russian

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

directed, produced, and written by

Gabe Polsky Gabe Polsky (born May 3, 1979) is an American film director, writer and producer. Early life Polsky was born to Soviet immigrants, and raised in the Chicago area. He attended the Hotchkiss School. After graduating, he went to Yale University ...

, executive produced by

Jerry Weintraub Jerome Charles "Jerry" Weintraub (September 26, 1937 – July 6, 2015) was an American film producer, talent manager and actor whose television films won him three Emmys. He began his career as a talent agent, having managed relatively unknown ...

and

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

. It premiered at the 2014

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

and was released in limited theaters by

Sony Pictures Classics Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produce ...

on January 23, 2015. The film tells the story of the

Soviet Union national ice hockey team The Soviet national ice hockey team was the national men's ice hockey team of the Soviet Union. From 1954, the team won at least one medal each year at either the Ice Hockey World Championships ...

through the eyes of team captain

Slava Fetisov Viacheslav Alexandrovich "Slava" Fetisov (Russian: Вячеслав Александрович Фетисов, ''Vjačeslav Aleksandrovič Fetisov''; born 20 April 1958) is a Russian former professional ice hockey defenceman. He played for HC CS ...

, in particular the famed 1990s five-man unit known as The

Russian Five The Russian Five was the nickname given to the unit of five Russian ice hockey players from the Soviet Union that played for the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League in the 1990s. The five players were Sergei Fedorov, Vladimir Konstan ...

. The film details the link between sports and politics. The film also narrates how players were wooed by

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

scouts and eventually flooded NHL rosters. The film is particularly harsh on the ruthless tactics of coach Viktor Tikhonov about whom none of the players have a kind word. Tikhonov died in November 2014. The movie uses rare archival footage, including children singing " No Coward Plays Hockey."

Background

The film relates the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

's dominance of

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

during the Cold War.

Release

''Red Army'' made its North American debut at the

2014 Toronto International Film Festival The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival, the 39th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held in Canada from 4–14 September 2014. David Dobkin's film '' The Judge'', starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert D ...

and was released in American theaters by Sony Pictures Classics. The film is about the Soviet-Russian game from the 1950s to the dominance of the 1970s and 1980s and then gradual deterioration in the 1990s. The film was screened in the Special Screenings section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. The film was included in the official selections at the 2014 Telluride,

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

and New York film festivals. ''Red Army'' won Audience Awards at the 2014

AFI AFI may refer to: * ''Address-family identifier'', a 16 bit field of the Routing Information Protocol * Ashton Fletcher Irwin, an Australian drummer * AFI (band), an American rock band ** ''AFI'' (2004 album), a retrospective album by AFI rele ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and Middleburg film festivals. The film was also selected as the Opening Ceremony film of the 2014

Moscow International Film Festival The Moscow International Film Festival (russian: Моско́вский междунаро́дный кинофестива́ль, translit. ''Moskóvskiy myezhdunaródniy kinofyestivál''; abbreviated as MIFF) is the film festival first h ...

Reception

''Red Army'' is one of the best reviewed films of 2014, maintaining a 97% rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

with an average rating of 7.9/10 based on 92 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Fun and fascinating, ''Red Army'' delivers absorbing documentary drama for hockey fans and sports novices alike." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has an 83 out of 100 rating based on 33 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". A. O. Scott of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' called the film a "stirring, crazy story—a Russian novel of Tolstoyan sweep and Gogl-esque absurdity". ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' magazine said: "this playful, poignant film presents a human story that transcends decades, borders and ideologies". Scott Feinberg of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' called the film "one of the best documentaries that I have ever seen". The film was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Gu ...

References

External links

Sony Pictures Classics official site
* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Red Army 2014 films 2010s Russian-language films 2010s biographical films 2014 documentary films 2010s historical films American biographical films American sports documentary films American historical films American independent films Films scored by Christophe Beck Russian biographical films Russian documentary films Russian historical films Russian independent films Documentary films about ice hockey Documentary films about the Cold War Documentary films about the Soviet Union Ice hockey in the Soviet Union Ice hockey in Russia Sony Pictures Classics films American ice hockey films Russian ice hockey films 2010s English-language films Films directed by Gabe Polsky 2010s American films 2014 multilingual films American multilingual films Russian multilingual films

Background

Release

Reception

See also

References

External links