Soviet Ice Hockey Gets New Life in "Red Army"

(ATR) Ice hockey star Alex Ovechkin fires pucks at a net adorned with Russian nesting dolls. With each shot, a different doll and a burst of Russian salad dressing rains down. A radio DJ chuckles nearby.

It's a lighthearted scene in many contexts. In a voiceover, Soviet legend Slava Fetisov discusses the creep of western capitalism at the expense of the Soviet way of life.

"The guy is free. [Ovechkin] can do whatever he wants, which is a good thing," Gabe Polsky, writer and director of "Red Army," tells Around the Rings.

"He's having fun, but at the same time, there is a sadness there."

No one in "Red Army" is mourning that past, exactly. It cost millions their lives and oppressed tens of millions more.

But there's no escaping the finality: the conditions that allowed the Soviet Union to create one of the most skilled, artful, disciplined and dominant athletic units the world has ever seen - one that won nine world championships and three Olympic golds in one 10-year span - are gone forever.

Ovechkin and Fetisov are among the 500-plus natives of the former Soviet Union who have played in the National Hockey League. Much of the film though takes place in a time before the country's players could seek their fortune in North America.

Fetisov is the fulcrum as he discusses his grueling rise through the country's robust youth program and onto the national team. His head coach Anatoli Tarasov, a jolly, rotund genius inspired by the potential for grace in the game, is succeeded by the tyrannical Viktor Tikhonov, whose methods are more classically Soviet.

There's the deep friendship Fetisov forms with teammate fellow defenseman Alexei Kasatonov, one that is later betrayed at a critical time for Fetisov.

Another member of the team, Vladimir Krutov, is plainly haunted by his time in the Red Army.

"It's almost like if you have a family member that you've lived your life with and you've loved and they just can't ... move on from something," said Polsky of Krutov.

The level of control and deception exerted over the players in the Cold War milieu is neverending. The threat of defection to North America is constant. Teams are essentially imprisoned during training camp with one player denied the right to even see his dying father.

With such tension comes moments of humor as well. Whether its hockey pucks obliterating nesting dolls or a young girl wandering up to a former KGB agent in a park to ask him to take his glasses off, Polsky, who said he enjoys things "a little offbeat and strange," has a deft feel for finding lightness in the subject matter.

"We can look at history and laugh at it, but it's also crazy and serious and really dynamic. You have to be open for these kinds of amazing things to happen."

It is a side of the story not often told, one that Polsky considers tragic in some ways. The people of the Soviet Union lived for the ice hockey team, and their fortunes paralleled those of the team for a time.

The story is expertly told with pacing and tones that echo a political thriller. Modern graphics are stylishly juxtaposed with grim file footage from inside the Soviet machine.

The film is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the United States. It was an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, and the Telluride Film Festival.

View the trailer below.

Written by Nick Devlin

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