East meets West when ice wasn’t only thing cold
Red Army doc replays Cold War hockey duel
Red Army 1/2 (out of five) Starring: Vyacheslav Fetisov, Scotty Bowman, Anatoli Karpov Directed by: Gabe Polsky Running time: 76 minutes
Canada’s hockey ego was redeemed by Paul Henderson’s goal against the Soviets back in 1972, but as Gabe Polsky’s new documentary Red Army makes abundantly clear, just about everyone was an underdog against the Red Army team.
The team was a collection of career hockey players plucked from the heaving breast of Mother Russia as young boys, then trained and programmed like precise cogs in a team machine.
The whole Soviet program was militaristic, political and unforgiving, but it was also crucial to the ongoing propaganda war with the West, resulting in a team that represented sport and ideology.
It was a lot for the players to bear, and Polsky does his best to get to the heart of the story by talking to Red Army legends such as Vyacheslav Fetisov, Igor Larionov and Vladislav Tretiak — as well as the coach of coaches, Scotty Bowman.
Excellent at recapturing the era, Polsky’s film dumps viewers into their Cold War armchairs and forces us to relive all the nail-biting, hockey-based nationalism that separated East and West.