Slap Shot **** (1977, Paul Newman, Michael Ontkean) – Classic Movie Review 1427

Director George Roy Hill’s funny, fast and furious 1977 ice hockey comedy drama stars Paul Newman, who is on top form as Reggie Dunlop, an ageing player-coach sports star who plays dirty to win. His struggling Charlestown Chiefs minor league hockey team resorts to violent play to gain popularity in a declining factory town. Naturally his team attracts an increasingly devoted following the nastier it plays.

Michael Ontkean scores highly too as Newman’s buddy, top scorer Ned Braden, and Strother Martin is welcome as the team’s manager Joe McGrath who has resorted to extreme cost-cutting techniques and embarrassing promotional antics to keep local interest alive. During a hopeless season, the Chiefs pick up the Hanson Brothers (Jeff and Steve Carlson), bespectacled violent goons with childlike mentalities, complete with toys in their luggage. 

Slap Shot is a tough man’s man movie that’s spattered with an endless supply of punch-ups and four-letter words, and plenty of cynicism too, but it’s still extremely likeable. It reunites Newman with his The Sting director Hill, and is surprisingly written by a woman – Nancy Dowd. She partly based her screenplay on her brother Ned Dowd’s experiences playing minor league hockey in the 1970s, when violence, especially in the low minors, was the selling point of the game.

Newman’s character is based on John Brophy, a long-time minor-league player and coach. Brophy later coached the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs for two and a half seasons. Ontkean played college hockey at the University of New Hampshire.

The appalling TV version cuts the strong language and substitutes silly alternatives on the soundtrack. Newman said he swore very little in real life before the making the film, but ‘Since Slap Shot, my language is right out of the locker room!’ Newman said Reggie Dunlop was one of his favourite roles and that the most fun he ever had making a movie was on Slap Shot, as he had played the sport when young and was fascinated by the real players on the film.

Followed by Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice, an unexpected, belated 2002 sequel to the 1977 hit, with Stephen Baldwin, and Slap Shot 3: The Junior League in 2008,  starring Greyston Holt.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1427

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