Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Slap Shot Blu-ray Movie Review

Sticking It to Whoever Gets in Your Way

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 22, 2013

Slap Shot was Paul Newman's favorite role and, as he often said in interviews, the most fun he ever had making a film. Reuniting with director George Roy Hill, with whom he made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973), Newman led a combined cast of actors and hockey players to create one of American cinema's essential sports films. Hockey fans got it immediately, even if film critics took a while to come around. The late Gene Siskel famously wrote that one of his biggest regrets as a reviewer was failing to appreciate the brilliance of Slap Shot when it first appeared. He later ranked it as one of the greatest American comedies of all time.

Hill was a natural fit to direct a film about the testosterone-saturated antics of a minor league hockey team on a losing streak, but one of Slap Shot's ironies is that the script was penned by a woman, Nancy Dowd, whose brother, Ned, played for the Johnstown Jets, the model for the film's Charlestown Chiefs. Dowd built the script from her brother's life and experiences and those of his teammates and friends, which gives even the most absurd moments in Slap Shot a grounding in reality. With Ned Dowd as a technical advisor (he also appeared in the small but memorable role of Ogie Oglethorpe) and many more real hockey players recruited for both the Chiefs and their opponents, including the so-called "Hanson Brothers (of which more below), Hill was able to capture authentic scenes of rinkside mayhem that no film has ever surpassed. The audiences of 1977 were shocked by the violence and also, in that pre-Tarantino era, by the locker-room language. Newman himself claimed that his vocabulary changed after Slap Shot, as if his foul-mouthed character had lodged somewhere permanently in his brain.

Previous versions of Slap Shot on VHS, laserdisc and DVD have suffered from soft, grainy images lacking in detail. Universal's "Best of the Decade" Blu-ray edition represents a leap upward in quality and deserves a place in every fan's library.

Slap Shot chronicles a season in the rambunctious career of the Charlestown Chiefs hockey team, who play in the fictional Federal League. Under Coach Reg Dunlop (Newman), the team has been losing for years, and this season looks to be no different. The manager, Joe McGrath (Strother Martin), is cutting costs wherever he can, lining up promotional events like fashion shows (which the players find humiliating) and generally behaving like the captain of a sinking ship. Dunlop suspects that the team's owner, whose identity he doesn't know, is preparing to shutter the clubhouse.

But Dunlop is a perpetual scammer and con artist, with the same "trust me" glint in his eye that has made so many of Newman's characters irresistible. He persuades a local sports reporter, Dickie Dunn (M. Emmet Walsh)—whose name has since become a hockey slang term for bad reporting—to plant a story that a Florida senior citizens' group is interested in buying the team. Dunlop want to dangle just enough hope to keep up his players' spirits while he figures out his next move. (The flaw in all of Dunlop's cons is that he never actually has a next move.)

Dunlop gets an unexpected break when McGrath hands him some new players who, at first, the coach doesn't take seriously: three bespectacled brothers known as the Hansons. The Hanson Brothers are based on three real hockey players, Jeff, Steve and Jack Carlson, who were cast to play a version of themselves. At the last minute, however, Jack Carlson was called up by his team and had to be replaced by another player, whose real name just happened to be Dave Hanson. So, in the end, the only Hanson playing a Hanson Brother wasn't, in fact, a Hanson Brother. If that makes sense.

Director Hill told the "Hansons" to behave just as they normally would, and they took him at his word, adding such touches as the toy racing cars with which the brothers arrive in Charlestown, to the bafflement of Dunlop and his players. Hill and his editor, the celebrated Dede Allen (Dog Day Afternoon), carefully build to the moment when, in desperation, Dunlop finally sends them in from the bench and the ensuing mayhem brings the cheering crowd to their feet. (It turns out they can also play hockey.) The Hanson Brothers are so eager to fight the other team that punches are thrown even before games begin. A great moment in Slap Shot is the singing of the national anthem with the Hansons at attention, blood already running down their faces, while the ref tries to control the steam pouring out of his ears. (He fails.)

With the Hansons aboard, attendance soars, and the Chiefs attract boosters like they haven't seen in years. Then the impossible happens—they start winning. Dunlop thinks he has a chance, but while he may know hockey, he doesn't understand economics. The closing of the steel mill in Charlestown, with 10,000 workers laid off, is an early clue that there are larger forces at work.

The secondary plot in Slap Shot is the odd love life (if you can call it that) of the overgrown adolescents who devote their lives to this all-consuming game. A trio led by Shirley Upton (Swoosie Kurtz) are a constant presence and serve as models of the ideal player's wife: patiently waiting and watching at every game and always available to support their man and pick up the pieces. In contrast is Francine Dunlop (Jennifer Warren), Reg's ex-wife, who has had enough of that life, although her affection for Reg remains undimmed. You can see it in her face whenever Reg tries to sweet-talk her into getting back together, just as you can also see that Reg hasn't a chance. (Reg also dallies with the ex of a rival player—a brief but memorable appearance by Melinda Dillon—but that turns out to be more about the game than about love.)

An even starker contrast is presented by Lily Braden (Lindsay Crouse), the wife of Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), a sullen star player who doesn't fit the profile of a typical Chief. College educated with his apparent pick of white collar jobs, Ned has deliberately chosen life as a hockey bum, dragging his wife to a place that she despises. The Braden marriage is on the rocks for most of Slap Shot, until Francine Dunlop takes Lily aside and teaches her the basics of being a hockey wife. The result is one of the wildest and most outrageous sequences in a film that has already gone pretty far over the top. Some viewers think it's too much. You be the judge.

Slap Shot Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Director George Roy Hill has long gotten the unfair rap of having no visual style, probably because he had the bad luck to make films in the era when visionaries like Scorsese, Spielberg, Ashby and Coppola were redefining the look of cinema. Still, with the help of Victor Kemper, one of the essential cinematographers of the Seventies (Dog Day Afternoon, Coma, . . .And Justice for All, to name just a few), Hill created a distinctive and appropriate visual vocabulary for Slap Shot. The urban and interior scenes have the dull, subdued, naturalistic look that instantly marks the film as a product of the Seventies. (So do the fashions worn by Newman and the other players, which were tacky even by standards of the era.) Colors are generally bland, and the image typically lacks depth. On the ice, by contrast, or in any activity directly related to the game, the image brightens with higher contrast and more saturated primary colors enter the picture, whether on team uniforms, or red-white-and-blue bunting or just the yellow of a booster bus. The image gains greater depth, and there's never any question what makes these players feel most alive.

Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray represents a welcome departure from the studio's frequent tendency to make its catalog titles look more like video than film. Working from well-maintained (or well-restored) source material, the studio has produced a sharply detailed transfer with a fine-grained, film-like texture that doesn't suffer from the artificial sharpening that has unnecessarily polished so many previous Universal catalog releases. Black levels and contrast look correct, and color saturation varies from the drabness of downtown Charlestown to the saturation of the Chiefs' best uniforms. You can see the film's grain pattern if you look for it, and it doesn't appear to have been stripped or reduced, just captured and gently reproduced in pixels. At an average bitrate of 31.99 Mbps, there's plenty of bandwidth to handle the players whizzing around the ice, bashing each other with everything they've got.

Slap Shot Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Slap Shot's original mono sound mix is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right front channels. As mono mixes from the era go, it's one of the better ones, with good fidelity, decent dynamic range and an energetic presence, especially during the hockey sequences, where the body blows, stick hits, punches, stomps, scrapes and other sounds of violence register with appropriate impact. The dialogue is generally clear, although some of the non-professionals tend to slur their words.

No original musical scoring was created; the music is all source-derived and consists of contemporary pop tunes that have been expertly chosen for their sound and thematic content. Many of these were replaced in earlier video versions, but as far as I can tell, the original selections are all here. (If anyone notices a replacement, please contact me directly so that I can add it to the review.) Some of the notable songs are: Elton John's "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word"; Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing"; and Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From".

Slap Shot Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from the "25^th Anniversary Special Edition" DVD released by Universal in 2005 (by which time, it should be noted, the film was already 28 years old).

• Commentary with the Hanson Brothers: Jeff and Steve Carlson and David Hanson watch the movie together and offer occasional comments, primarily on the hockey players, their technique, personalities and subsequent careers. There are long periods of dead air, and only occasionally do the three commentators drop a recollection about making the film. Even the hardest core of hockey fans will have trouble getting through this one.



• Puck Talk with the Hanson Brothers (480i; 1.33:1; 4:57): In a much better approach, the three players who portrayed the Hansons are interviewed by a questioner off-camera, and their answers are cut down to the essentials. They talk about being recruited to perform in the film, how they approached their work, and how the movie has affected their subsequent careers.



• The Hanson Brothers' Classic Scenes: This is nothing more than a bookmarked listing of notable moments from Slap Shot featuring the Hansons. It hardly feels like an extra.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.33:1; 1:49). "There has never been a film like Slap Shot. There may never be another."

Slap Shot Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Watching Slap Shot is reportedly a favorite pastime of hockey teams on tour, but you don't have to be a hockey fan, or even a sports enthusiast, to enjoy the film's high spirits. Newman's pleasure in playing Reg Dunlop is so infectious that he draws viewers into Reg's every encounter, even when Reg has no idea what he's doing. When the hopeful coach finally does track down the mysterious team owner, he's hopelessly out of his element, but you admire him for the effort. When we last see him, he's got a whole new deal going, or at least that's what he says. He may be making it up as he goes along, but you'd love to see what he does next. Highly recommended.