The Russian Five: Red Wings from the Red Army

By the early 1990s, Detroit was a sad shadow of its 1960s industrial glory, but it was still represented a quantum increase in the potential living standards for Russia’s top hockey players. That really ought to be the final word on the Soviet Socialist experiment. Of course, it was not just their economic freedoms that were curtailed. The USSR tightly controlled their travel and maintained intrusive surveillance, especially when they might come in contact with Westerners. Nevertheless, the Detroit Red Wings managed to draft, sign, and suit-up some the best players produced by the Soviet hockey machine. The resulting Motor City sports history is chronicled in Joshua Riehl’s The Russian Five, which opens today in New York.

Sergei Fedorov was the first Russian player to join the Red Wings, after they helped facilitate his defection following an exhibition match sponsored by the Goodwill Games (that was probably the first time Ted Turner’s pet project made headlines, but it most likely wasn’t what he had in mind). The team also caused a bit of an international incident when they brought over Vladimir Konstantinov and his family, by way of Hungary, where they had already chucked Communism into the dustbin of history. However, it was a relatively easy process adding Vyacheslaw Kozlov to the roster, while Viacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov were acquired the old-fashioned way—through trades.

Together they were the Russian Five and they ignited the cellar-dwelling Red Wings. Not surprisingly, they were highly compatible on the ice. They racked up W’s during the regular season, but for several years, they experienced all sorts of heartache during the playoffs.

Like any good sports doc, The Russian Five has triumph and tragedy, as well as a seriously villainous rival in the form of the Colorado Avalanche. Even if you have no interest in hockey, you will still get caught up in the drama. This is the kind of film that is perfect for fans of ESPN’s 30 for 30 and HBO’s Real Sports. Obviously, there are also geopolitical implications to the story, but Riehl does his best to soft pedal them. This could well be a function of the subjects themselves, including Fetisov, who served as Putin’s minister of sport and a principle architect of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Nonetheless, there is absolutely no denying which side of the Iron Curtain had the best opportunities for players. Riehl uses some entertaining animated sequences to help tell the tale, but the liveliest episodes involve the team’s wild forays into international relations. He has lengthy on-camera sit-downs with all four of the Russian Five who are still available for media, as well as former Red Wings GM Jim Devellano and many of their fellow players, including team captain Steve Yzerman, who gets credit for being an equally important addition to the team and Darren McCarty, who can tell hockey war stories with the best of them. Jeff Daniels the actor also pops up from time to time, because he is apparently the Red Wings’ most famous fan.

You might expect Riehl’s film would overlap considerably with Gabe Polsky’s Red Army, but the Detroit focus makes it almost entirely new and completely fresh for fans of Russian hockey docs. Even though it is not about the Rangers, it is still quite watchable and engaging. Easily recommended for athletically-inclined viewers, especially those interested in how sports and culture relate and respond to each other, The Russian Five opens today (5/31) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Destined: Blind Chance, Detroit-Style

Rasheed Smith lives in Detroit, so his destiny is pretty set. However, there could be slight variations, depending on whether he becomes an architect or a drug lord. Either way, Detroit is still Detroit. Qasim Basir follows both parallel lives in the Blind Chance-like (in terms of narrative) Destined (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

In one strand of fate, Rasheed the aspiring drug dealer is busted and goes straight. In the other, the more fleet of foot Sheed escapes to master his trade and work his way up the ladder. In both versions, he is good to his mother, but she is more crack-prostitute-ish in the drug kingpin storyline, even though Sheed is the one who could afford to move her out of the projects.

In both narratives, Ra/Sheed is poised to reach the big time in their respective careers, by making Faustian bargains. Sheed the dealer is about to strike a deal with a dodgy South American cartel to supply an expected influx of new gentrification residents, whereas Rasheed has been tapped to serve as the figurehead on a redevelopment project that would turn his old housing project into luxury condos. In each storyline, characters seem bizarrely confident swarms of yuppies are eager to colonize the most blighted block of inner city Detroit.

Naturally, certain characters reappear in each respective branch of fate, including the extraordinary underwhelming Mayor Jones, played with slimy obsequiousness by CSI New York’s Hill Harper. However, there are times when the duality does not make sense, such as Jesse Metcalfe’s Dylan Holder, who is the narc dogging Sheed in one possible destiny and the entitled son of Rasheed’s real estate developer boss in the other.

Frankly, Destined is more like Star Trekian alternate universes than Blind Chance-istic diverging tributaries of fate. In any event, the fatalism of Kieswloski’s film perfectly suited Martial Law-era Poland. Indeed, there are obvious reasons why the Polish masterpiece was withheld from public release since its completion in 1981 until early 1987. In the case of Destined, Basir’s determination to bring the two strands together feels like hollow pretentiousness. As a further frustration, the two alternate timelines are not clearly stylistically delineated, which frequently causes confusion.

Still, Cory Hardrict is appropriately moody as Ra/Sheed and Paula Devicq has some nice moments as his mom. That’s right, the nanny on Party of Five plays the mother of a grown son. Admittedly, this is an ambitious format to tackle, but Kieslowski managed to do it perfectly the first time. Ultimately just sort of okay, but nothing special, Destined opens today (11/17) in LA, at the Arena CineLounge.

Generation Startup: Too Little, Too Late?

Currently, entrepreneurship is at all time low for the 18-30 age bracket, which makes sense considering they were the demographic that so ardently embraced Commissar Bernie Sanders. In the past, the ambition to earn financial independence and be one’s own boss motivated entrepreneurs, but today’s millennials need mentors to hold their hands and the structure of fellowships. To that end, Andrew Yang created Venture for America (VFA) to place college graduates in startup ventures for boots on the ground capitalism experience, but the documented results vary drastically in Cynthia Wade & Cheryl Miller Houser’s Generation Startup (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Ostensibly about VFA startup apprenticeships, Generation is just as much a promotional film for the Detroit Chamber of Commerce. All of the featured startups are located in the former Motor City, where they are helping to power its comeback, at least according to Wade & Houser’s narrative. Of course, the volume of abandoned houses bought sight unseen through repossession auctions helps drive the initial business of Castle, a remote property management startup co-founded by Max Nussenbaum. Castle shares office space with Brian Rudolph’s Banza, a gluten-free chickpea pasta company, but the actual manufacturing happens in a small plant north of the city. Details, details.

To give credit where credit is due, Nussenbaum and Rudolph have legitimately inspiring success stories to tell. However, Generation’s most compelling POV figure is unquestionably Labib Rahman, the VFA fellow placed at tech startup Mason. Expecting his Muslim parents will disown him when they learn he is no longer religious, Rahman feels intense pressure to succeed while they are still on speaking terms, but his experiences at Mason are decidedly mixed.

Occasionally, Wade & Houser also check in with Kate Catlin at tech startup Detroit Labs, but apparently what they do is so boring she mostly spends her time organizing Women Rising, an organization to promote woman-to-woman mentoring in the technology sector, which seems to practice empowerment through cocktail parties. The filmmakers spend more time with Dextina Booker, an associate with a private grant development agency, but she can never discuss any of her work due to confidentiality agreements, so mainly she just bikes around taking stock of the new and improved Detroit.

Frankly, Generation Startup will make you pine for the glory days of the Silicon Cowboys who founded Compaq computers. They revolutionized the personal computer industry without the aid of mentors or fellows. As well-intentioned as VFA is, the very need for it suggests we have lost our way as a country. Despite the interesting case studies of Castle and Banza, Generation fails dreadfully in its attempts to reassure viewers regarding Millennial entrepreneurship and Detroit’s vaunted rebound. Tellingly, it never broaches subjects like the impact of taxation and closed union shops on embryonic startups. The promotional tone of the film does not do it any favors either.

Viewers looking to learn more about the transformative power of startup capital will be far better served by James & Maureen Castle Tusty’s internationally focused Economic Freedom in Action. Mostly disappointing and largely un-self-aware, Generation Startup opens this Friday (9/23) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Don’t Breathe: One Way or Another, Detroit Will Kill You

Detroit has slashed it police force by forty percent over the last ten years. Ordinarily, that makes things awfully convenient for Rocky and her burglar pals, because it means there just are not a lot of cops to respond to calls. However, their perspective will change drastically when they pick the profoundly wrong house to invade in Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe (trailer here), which opens nationwide today.

Detroit’s population has fallen below 700,000 yet its murder rate is eleven times what we have here in sprawling, unruly New York City. It is not uncommon to see one lone house standing amongst the razed ruins of formerly residential neighborhood. Rocky, her slimy boyfriend Money, and the torch-carrying Alex think they will find a big score inside one of them. Supposedly, the owner is a blind veteran, who received a large cash settlement when a well-heeled Grosse Pointe teenager killed his daughter in a hit-and-run.

Alex is sort of the inside man. His father works for a security company, so he has access to their alarm codes. Ordinarily, he insists on strict ground rules. The total haul should be under ten grand and include no cash. That way they can avoid grand larceny charges. This job will violate all his terms, but he agrees anyway for Rocky’s sake. In retrospect, that will be a profound mistake.

Needless to say, the old man is spryer than they anticipated. In fact, he is pretty chiseled. He also has rather sinister reasons for not wanting any visitors. When the lights are out, he clearly holds home field advantage.

Admittedly, making the terrifying old man a veteran is a real buzz kill, but at least Alvarez and co-screenwriter Rodo Sayagues try not to belabor the point (unlike the aggressively disrespectful Dementia). Arguably, it is the quickest credible explanation for why an old blind cat would have a commando’s physique (being a cop wounded on the job could add unnecessary narrative complications).

In any event, there is a ton of sneaking around on tippy-toe in Breathe, which Alvarez executes quite adroitly. Ironically, some of the most intense sequences spell out of the inhospitable house, in part because they underscore just how on your own you are in some Detroit neighborhoods.

As always, Stephen Lang is massively hardnosed as the old man, whom he plays with extra crustiness and erratic twitchiness this time around. Jane Levy chokes back screams and holds her breath pretty effectively, but it is hard to get how she got involved with Money, Daniel Zovatto’s white trash caricature or Alex, the big nothing blandly portrayed by Dylan Minnette.

Alvarez keeps raising the stakes nicely, maintaining a tight, tense one-darned-thing-after-another pace. It is maybe not staggeringly original (one could argue it shares surface similarities with Viet Nguyen’s Crush the Skull and Adam Schindler’s Intruders, both of which are even better), but it gets the genre job done. Recommended for horror fans, Don’t Breathe opens in theaters across the country today (8/26), including the AMC Empire in New York.

Burn: Detroit in Flames

Detroit has just over a sixth of Los Angeles’ population but nearly three times as many fires.  On average, thirty buildings ignite every day.   For a city of seven hundred thousand-some people with dwindling resources that is a whole lot of alarms. This is the situation faced by a veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, who returns to his native Detroit, hoping to whip the beleaguered organization into shape.  However, the city’s extreme dysfunction might be insurmountable.  At least that is the impression viewers often glean from Tom Putnam & Brenna Sanchez’s Burn (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

The numbers are staggering.  When newly appointed Executive Fire Commissioner Donald Austin assumes his new position there are 800,000 abandoned structures in Detroit—and Engine Company 50 has more than their fair share.  Such ghost buildings are particularly susceptible to accidental combustion, also attracting bored firebugs like a magnet.  Facing budget cuts, Austin sets a controversial new policy: if responding firefighters determine an abandoned structure is empty and not a threat to other occupied buildings, they should let it burn.

Through three primary POV figures, the filmmakers show the audience boots-on-the-ground firefighting from the inside out, as well as the bureaucracy that makes everything harder.  Two are exactly the sort of sympathetic individuals one would expect.  Dave Parnell is a veteran field engine operator on the brink of retirement.  A rarity amongst his colleagues, he actually lives in the neighborhood they serve.  Former firefighter Brendan “Doogie” Milewski is also a strong rooting interest, struggling to come to grips with his lower paralysis after a roof collapsed upon him.

Without question though, the film’s greatest surprises come from its third focal character, Commissioner Austin.  Although his my-way-or-the-highway style initially alienates firefighters (and most likely audience members), he evolves in interesting ways during his time on the job.  He can clearly walk the walk as well as talk the talk and many of his beefs, such as the engine that was destroyed when its driver parked it in front of an approaching train, are hard to debate.

Watching Burn gives one the uneasy feeling that we are seeing the future, given the degree to which the depressionary economic policies that devastated Detroit largely emerged victorious at the polls yesterday.  On the other hand, it also shows how far filmmaking technology has evolved.  It used to be nearly impossible to replicate the vividness of a large scale conflagration on-screen.  Yet, Putnam & Sanchez fully capture the bright yellows and oranges of the lapping flames.  It is a sobering warning how far a once prosperous city can fall.  While another recent documentary about the Motor City largely misses the obvious lessons, it would be an intriguing companion film to Florent Tillon’s eerie and ruminative Detroit Wild City.

There is indeed a fair amount of Backdraft action in Burn, with an equal or greater amount of time devoted to the consequences of sending out ill-equipped, overworked companies, day after day.  Yet, the scenes of the commissioner struggling to lead a skeptical department are arguably Putnam & Sanchez’s biggest scoop. It is also worth noting the filmmakers have pledged to give a portion of the proceeds to executive producer Denis Leary’s Leary Firefighters Foundation. 

New Yorkers have a special place in their hearts for firemen, particularly after 9-11, so Burn is likely to strike a chord locally.  Recommended for fire department boosters and fans of History Channel “extreme jobs” reality programming, Burn opens tomorrow (11/9) in New York at the Quad Cinema.