Slap Shot was a film made when Paul Newman was no longer the young fresh faced matinee idol he once was, but still was doggedly handsome. They must have wondered what to do with him.
George Roy Hill always knew what to do with Newman, and generally put together his best vehicles. They made The Sting and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid together. An alarming amount of the films he made garnered Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Hill recognized Robin Williams as a great talent for more than just comedy before anyone by hiring him for The World According to Garp when no one would have thought of him for the role.
Shot in the steel belt of Pennsylvania in the late 70’s, it definitely has a vibe like All The Right Moves with a kind of pallor and grittiness looming in the atmosphere. When we begin the film, the mill is closing and the Charlestown Chiefs are a minor league (but pro) ice hockey team in the Federal league, they are suffering with the sparse fan base knitting, instead of cheering, in the stands. We are told early on that these guys are not very good. They desperately need publicity and manager Strother Martin, in one of his frequent Newman collaborations, sends the team out for every silly publicity stunt he can think of. Unfortunately, these guys on the team don’t like it and sometimes make bad choices…you know like flashing a room full of ladies at a fashion show.
It’s not surprising that this film came out just a year after Bad News Bears came out. The similarities are obvious. It’s a foul mouthed view of some questionable athletes looking for respect. In this case, it’s adults, though, and they want respect so they can keep their jobs, so it all seems a little more desperate. A little more bleak.
The fans have turned on the team, it is up for sale, and the aging vetran player/manager portrayed by Newman starts to spin a web of lies to save the team. His plan? To spread gossip that there is interest in the team elsewhere and make the team successful enough that some of that interest may actually emerge.
Helping him in this campaign, albeit unknowingly, is local newspaper reporter Dickie Dunn (played by the always talented M. Emmett Walsh) who barfs back whatever nonsense Newman feeds him. But most helpful is the arrival of the Hanson Brothers, a triple threat of goon players, more violent than you can possibly imagine and are responsible for all the best laughs in the film. No one “puts on the foil” like the Hansons.
The brothers, as much of the film, are based on real people, heightened for the film. The script was actually written by a woman whose brother played in the minor leagues. Many of the actors in the film played hockey professionally including the Hansons.
You can find a number of cool actors in the background. Jerry Houser, a 70s TV staple best known from Summer of ‘42, has a fun turn as “Killer.” Noted comedy character actors Swoosie Kurtz and Paul Dooley have small roles. Melinda Dillon, best known as the mom on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, went on to get an Oscar nomination when she co-starred with Newman again in Absence of Malice.
The theme of the movie is about violence and it hedges its bets. While drawing audiences by using violence in film is being criticized, it is this violence that is the backdrop for all the on rink antics that people know and love from the film. So it is saying, “Isn’t violence bad?” while only being watchable because of that violence.
Ultimately, while long being a favorite of hockey fans, the movie really is notable mostly for the Hanson Brothers scenes (with or without their slot cars) and ultimately that is not enough to buoy the entire film. It’s a good film with great acting and strong production values, but it isn’t nearly as much fun as it should be. This is old time hockey afterall.