Paul Newman is ready to do whatever it takes to win in classic hockey flick
SLAP SHOT (George Roy Hill, 1977)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, July 29, $10, 7:00, and Sunday, July 31, free with museum admission, 4:00
Series continues through August 7
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.hansonbrothers.net
One of the best sports films ever made, Slap Shot is a riotously bloody look at minor-league hockey. Paul Newman — who declared this one of his favorite pictures — stars as Reggie Dunlop, an aging loser serving as player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs. When the general manager (Strother Martin) tells him that the team is being shut down at the end of the season, Dunlop decides to send it off with a bang. Lying to his team that if the Chiefs fill the seats and start winning they will move to Florida, he incorporates a different style of play into their game, led by the brutal, vicious, and utterly hilarious Hanson brothers (real-life brothers Jeff and Steve Carlson and their Johnstown Jets teammate Dave Hanson), who never met an opponent they wouldn’t punch, trip, slash, spear, or slam face-first into the boards well after the whistle. Even Dunlop gets in on the fun, throwing his share of right hands. The only player not participating in the hijinks is Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), who believes in sportsmanship and a more gentlemanly game of skill and beauty, not exactly what men like Ogie Oglethorpe (minor-league player Ned Dowd, whose sister, Nancy, wrote the book that the movie is based on, inspired by the real-life antics of the Johnstown Jets) have in mind. You don’t have to be a hockey fan to love Slap Shot, which is really, when it comes right down to it, just a little film about the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Slap Shot is screening July 29 & 31 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s tribute to Paul Newman, which continues July 30 with Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966), July 30-31 with Hombre (Martin Ritt, 1967), and August 6-7 with Nobody’s Fool (Robert Benton, 1994) and Twilight (Robert Benton, 1998).