If you crossed Rocky IV with The Mighty Ducks (or better yet, Slap Shot) and made it as a documentary, you might get somewhere close to Red Army. Director Gabe Polsky’s doc takes us behind the Iron Curtain for a gripping look at one of the greatest sports team in history: the Soviet Union’s ice hockey side of the late ‘70s and 1980s. Take a look at an exclusive new clip from the film below.
This footage delves into some of the tension at the story’s heart. The Soviet team’s coach Viktor Tikhonov, the closest the film comes to a villain, is the gimlet-eyed fanatic charged with coaching the team to Cold War supremacy. He keeps them under lock and key for all but a handful of days every year, drilling them into joyless automatons without ever quite extinguishing their genius for improvisation and creativity. As the clip reveals, he didn’t make too many of their Christmas card lists – and not just because they had to spend Christmas training.
The great defenceman Slava Fetisov is our conduit into this extraordinary era in ice-based sports. The talented Polsky, another documentary maker to keep a close eye on, brings his own Russian heritage to bear in telling a subtle story of a different kind of Cold War powerplay.
Catch Red Army in cinemas on October 9. It’ll be available via other platforms, including Curzon Home Cinema, on the same day.