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GOALIE
Director: Adriana Maggs Cast: Mark O'Brien, Kevin Pollak, Georgina Reilly, Érc Bruneau, Steve Byers, Ted Atherton, Janine Theriault, Owen Maggs, Matt Gordon, Jonny Harris MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:51 Release Date: 1/31/20 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 30, 2020 Co-writer/director Adriana Maggs is so concerned with filling in as many details as possible about Terry Sawchuk's life that she undermines the tragedy of that life. Goalie certainly makes its central point about how professional sports—hockey in this particular case and playing the eponymous position especially—can chew up and spit out the most talented, the most determined, and those with the most to prove. The screenplay (written by the director and her sister Jane Maggs), though, is mostly a formulaic biography, going from Sawchuk's difficult childhood to his self-destructive demise at the age of 40 and showing many vital or trivial milestones along the way. The framing here is pretty simple: Terry, played with wide-eyed determination turning to almost masochistic obsession by Mark O'Brien, didn't have a pleasant childhood, so he spent the rest of his life seeking confirmation of his worth. Raised outside Winnipeg, a young Terry was always second to his older brother, who died at 17. Picking up where the brother's promising hockey career ended, Terry is recruited to play for Detroit's professional team as the goalie—at a time when players didn't wear helmets or face masks. He takes a lot of punishment—pucks hitting his face and pummeling his body—and believes that coach Jack Adams (Kevin Pollak) genuinely cares about him. That belief, along with the fear that a goalie can be traded or let go without warning, only deepens Terry resolve to play through injuries and take even more punishment. That's the sad, tragic core of the movie and the character. When Maggs focuses exclusively on the man, the movie becomes a claustrophobic psychological study of how Terry's feelings of inadequacy lead him to increasingly dangerous extremes—for the cheers of fickle fans and the approval of managers who only care about money. He starts drinking to dull the constant pain, and his few moments of clarity about his situation are quickly sidelined for going back to the ice. Most of Goalie, though, is just going through the motions of biographical details—Terry's troubled marriage to Pat (Georgina Reilly), his wins and losses, his trades to various teams. There are plenty of moments when the filmmakers get to the troubled and troubling heart of Sawchuk's life, but those moments exit within the framework of a straightforward story and workmanlike storytelling. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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