Slap Shot (1977)

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Paul Newman stars as an aging ice hockey coach and player who tries to salvage his team’s careers by leaning into on-ice violence and wrestling-like theatrics, what the players call ‘goonery’. The effort works, leading to a winning streak, publicity, and huge crowds. But when the team’s owner still decides to fold the team for a tax write-off, spirits dive and the championship is put in peril.

Slap Shot may sound like a formula sports comedy, but it’s important to remember this is a film that helped establish that formula. The screenplay by Nancy Dowd feels fresh, remarkable for balancing character with subtle plot mechanics, never feeling forced or too obvious. Dowd presents characters in the middle of their lives and relationships, and we have to pay attention and wonder a bit why they say or do the things they do. (This is a skill many screenwriters lack, opting instead to present all the information up front in a tedious manner.) The film’s ensemble nature, lack of a traditional score, and other directorial decisions by George Roy Hill (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) give it a naturalistic feel inviting the audience to participate as a ‘fly on the wall’. It’s a ‘hang out’ movie that grows on you as you watch it. The characters become effortlessly endearing.

Slap Shot is a good comedy, grounded by a terrific leading performance by Paul Newman. He’s as charming as he is manipulative, succeeding in fooling his teammates into believing their salvation may be just around the corner just to keep their winning spirit alive. He’s not as lucky in fooling his estranged wife (Jennifer Warren) to stick with him. She’s too exhausted by the hockey lifestyle, but she tolerates his many attempts to woo her back. Their scenes are sweet, and somehow manage not to slow down the film’s momentum as many romantic subplots do.

Newman’s other primary conflict is with co-star Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks, Making Love). Ontkean’s character refuses to participate in the ‘goonery’ and wants to end his hockey career playing it straight and by the rules. While the film does indeed pose questions about the place of violence and crudeness in sports and how it all might influence children, never fear. Ontkean’s reversal gives the film a funny and sexy, highly memorable climax.

Perhaps the most famous and loved characters of Slap Shot are the three Hanson brothers — odd, bumbling young men eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years old who wear bottle-cap glasses and speak loudly enough that they must be partially deaf. They join the team early in the film and confound Newman’s character at first. But when he finally puts them in the game, it’s their innate ruthlessness that inspires his embrace of goonery. It’s when he cuts the Hanson brothers loose on the ice that the film gets many of its biggest laughs. The three actors are real life professional hockey players and the screenplay is partly based on their lives.

The strong supporting cast also features frequent Newman co-star Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke, Pocket Money) as the team’s beleaguered promoter and Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) as a topless newly-minted lesbian. With Lindsay Crouse and Jerry Houser.