Joe Meyers I’m not, but I finally got to the review copy… just in time. So here goes.
The Rocket invokes Babe Ruth’s name a couple of times, and like G.H., Maurice Richard transcends his game as a cultural icon. Coming straight out of Quebec, The Rocket, out on DVD today, frames its story with the Richard Riot in an engrossing movie that gets deeply into Richard’s status as both Francophone idol and brilliant hockey player.
Charles Binamé’s film tells a fairly straight-line narrative of Richard’s career, playing to (but never being trapped by) the sports-movie cliches, from the obligatory start where no one believed in him but his wife (and his wife’s mother), to his arrival as a symbol for the repressed French minority. The legendary moments make up most of the pivotal scenes in the movie: His first-season injury, his three-stars selection in the 1944 semis, 50 goals in 50 games, his ’52 semifinal comeback.
And, of course, the Riot at the climax. I needed to go and Google a reference to the “Duplessis era,” so I’m not one to talk much about how well the film captures the relationship between French and English Canada. But it certainly has a point of view.
Roy Dupuis, who has played Richard a few times, gives him the requisite fire in his eyes while keeping him human. The hockey scenes are pretty good, and the pro players do a good job, led by Mike Ricci as linemate Elmer Lach. Sean Avery, not exactly playing against type, nicely makes Bob Dill an on-screen villain who’ll help establish Richard’s credibility as a tough guy.
Some of the biggest nitpicks were in the subtitles: Dill was suspended from, as the dialogue says, the “American League,” not the USHL, in which he’d later play; Campbell really was the league president, not commissioner, a title that didn’t come into being until the Bettman era. As for the hockey, the only thing that jumped out was the famous night when Richard was selected as all three stars: In every telling I’d heard, they were announced third through first, but in the film, they were announced first through third, which takes the suspense out of it. Perhaps things changed somewhere along the line.
Anyway, suspense is never a problem in the movie. It moves along nicely, if with some abrupt transitions. Pierre Gill’s beautiful cinematography evokes the 1940s and ’50s, with a slightly grainy look and some muted color schemes that give the film a lost-documentary feel. It’s worth a look.