‘Miracle: The Boys of ’80’ Review: An Upset That Shaped a Nation’s Imagination (Netflix)

There are sporting victories that linger in collective memory—moments that remain vivid not only for fans of a team but for entire nations. Some are obvious, like World Cup titles, while others are more personal, unusual, or unexpected. Every so often, a triumph arrives at just the right historical moment and is said to push a divided country toward a sense of unity that hadn’t existed before. “We need a win like this now,” says one of the players from the U.S. ice hockey team that pulled off a stunning upset against the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

According to the film’s underlying premise, victories like this one can unite a people, reignite national pride, and foster bonds between individuals who otherwise have little in common. Having witnessed Argentina’s World Cup win in 2022—and the political aftermath that followed—it’s hard not to be skeptical of that logic.

Still, it makes for a compelling narrative. And that narrative was carefully built around the unlikely success of a sport that wasn’t even among the most popular in the United States at the time. More than once, the documentary notes how Americans gradually became obsessed with a game whose rules many of them barely understood. Even so, this victory came to symbolize national unity during a period marked by economic anxiety and following a 1970s decade in which overt nationalism had fallen out of favor. Considering that this mood shift eventually fed into the rise of Ronald Reagan, it’s possible to detect—here as elsewhere—a contradiction between the ideals of solidarity, teamwork, and collective effort celebrated by such victories and the era of radical individualism that followed.

On a more concrete level, the story is powerful because the United States simply didn’t have a strong hockey team. Olympic rules at the time restricted participation to amateur players, most of them drawn from college teams. Under the leadership of a tough, demanding coach—Herb Brooks—who pushed his players to their limits and sometimes crossed into outright mistreatment, young men from different parts of the country were forged into a single unit. After months of grueling training, they arrived at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, with almost no expectations. The film focuses on the team’s improbable, epic run, which reached its emotional peak in the dramatic match against the USSR—a nation seen, in the height of the Cold War, as pure evil: the ultimate enemy.

Following a familiar formula in contemporary sports documentaries, Miracle reunites the players decades later, brings them back to the arena where it all happened, and invites them to share personal memories and anecdotes while watching footage of those historic games—some of it previously unseen even by them. These moments are the film’s most moving, embedded within a narrative that closely follows the structure of the tournament itself, not unlike a football World Cup: a group stage followed by knockout rounds. What the documentary leaves unexplored—what remains conspicuously absent—is a deeper look at what became of these men afterward: how their personal and professional lives unfolded, and how this victory shaped them over the 45 years that followed.

The shock of that win—no spoiler here; the documentary announces it from the very first minute—was not the only thing that stunned both the players and the country. But it was the moment that created the myth. The Soviets were not only political enemies; on the ice, they were vastly superior to everyone else. The Americans had suffered a crushing defeat against them just days before the Olympics and hadn’t beaten them in decades. Until, suddenly, the “miracle” happened.

This documentary tells that story and honors its heroes. Everything else—the discourse around national unity, patriotic pride, and all the familiar rhetoric that comes with it—belongs to a deeper, more complex discussion, one full of contradictions and shades of gray.