Mystery, Alaska: hoosiers on ice
In 1976 Rocky said it once and for all: "I can't beat him. But that don't bother me. The only thing I want to do is to go the distance, that's all." The determined underdog, the noble nobody, the champion-in-waiting. These are the things we love. Mystery, Alaska (re)delivers them, packaged nicely in snow and isolation and every episode of Northern Exposure. Which isn't at all a drawback: Northern Exposure had some strong writing. Refreshingly, so does Mystery, Alaska, though of course it does--as the genre demands--dabble the slightest bit in hero-making. But so be it. Heroism and sports are synonymous in the American conscience. As are the Mighty Ducks and hockey. And, not unlike Mighty Ducks, it does all come down to that one final game--locals vs. the professionals--and it's all balanced such that individual victories and team victories are interdependent, and there are all the necessary enthematic rallies in the halftime locker room ('you've got the rest of your lives,' etc), but, in spite of all these predictable developments, Mystery, Alaska manages to set itself apart. Or, slightly above.
This is due largely to Russell Crowe as John Biebe, the aging Sheriff who--in the space of what has to be the most condensed 24 hours Mystery's ever seen--gets bumped off the local hockey team, has to arrest one of his players on shooting charges, and is called to investigate a 'mysterious' helicopter carrying his wife's old flame Charles Danner (Hank Azaria) back into town. Danner is of course bringing the news we already know from the trailer: that the New York Rangers are coming to town. Soon enough everything and everyone's in motion, preparing, anticipating, etc. Everyone except Judge Burns (Burt Reynolds), that is, the pessimistic voice of reason here. But he gets very little screentime, too, which makes it easy to get caught up in the fervor of this small town attempting to prove itself to/against the big city, which is nicely carried out on an individual level, with Sheriff Biebe, who has to similarly prove himself to the town council (who for some strange reason decide who gets to play in the weekly games).
But Crowe doesn't carry the movie himself. Mary McCormack as Donna Biebe is the real show-stealer, in an understated way. And of course Skank (Ron Eldard, with some good sitcom training) provides enough philandering humor that things never get boring. They do however, get a little contrived in a couple of places. The first of these is a court trial that, for a legally-hip audience, either rings a bit false or isn't quite Liar Liar-ish enough to mute our critical faculties. The second contrivance is the so-called low point of the narrative, when all the characters are simultaneously and conveniently hit with something from which it seems they surely won't be able to recover. In addition, there's a strange little teenage romance going on between the Judge's daughter and Stevie, the new team star, a relationship which seems to have been written in largely for comic effect, as it has no real relevance to the rest of the movie. It is funny, though, and does make room for the best line of the movie, to the Judge, from his wife, about his daughter's sex life, in response to his question about what they're talking about without him: "If you don't leave [the room] right now, I swear I'll tell you."
The Judge wisely backs out of the room, and Burt Reynolds is all hat-tipping Bandit as he does.
What's nice about Mystery, Alaska are those kind of moments, where you forget you're in a sports-movie and begin to suspect you might be getting caught up in some of this small town drama, the lives of these characters which are supposed to be just padding for the slow-motion action sequences. Yes, though, in the end Mystery, Alaska is just Hoosiers on ice, but all the same, Hoosiers was a good movie. Mystery, Alaska could have done far worse for a role model.
(c) 1999 by Stephen G. Jones
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