Duration : 122 min
In SLAP SHOT, a bolder take on George Roy Hill's favorite male youth stereotype, Paul Newman plays Reggie Dunlop, the venerable player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a fifth-year minor league hockey team. When their working-class town falls victim to Rust Belt disease in the 1970s, visitor numbers plummet and a greedy owner sets out to find a buyer eager to make a profit. Dunlop is informed that players will need to increase ticketsales to keep their jobs in what is expected to be the's final season. Much to the coach's dismay, general manager Joe McGrath calls the Hanson brothers, a Three Stooges ice hockey player who likes to attack soda machines. and play with toys. But once Dunlop lets them go, they become an armored division on the ice and the team starts winning by adopting their bone-crushing style.Although the team is doing well, Dunlop's wife Francine seems to be done with it, and the isolated wives of the remaining players are not much happier with their fate. This shocking,profanity-filled film is one of the funniest sports films ever made. While author Nancy Dowd wanted to explore darker themes such as possessiveness, fans' bloodlust and players' infantilism, Hill drowns them in loud laughter. Newman is nearing his peak as the romantic and manipulative, the effeminate, hard-drinking coach, and the fiery Hanson brothers who achieve comic immortality in their only film appearance.
