Red Army

84 minutes • 2014 • 7.6

In the humorous documentary Red Army, director Gabe Polsky lets us meet a bunch of the most important profiles of Soviet hockey, and lets them talk about how they and their families were used as pieces in an international power play.

We also get to see plenty of archive footage showing why Slava Fetisov, Vladislav Tretjak, Aleksey Kasanotov and the rest of 'The Red Army' have remained one of the most legendary teams in sports history.

Ice hockey was more than a sport in the Soviet Union. As the supremely best team in international hockey, the national team gave the citizens of the Union something to be proud of at a time when the weaknesses of the Soviet Communist model were becoming embarrassingly obvious. During the Cold War, there were few things that were not affected by the intricacies of the superpowers, and in the Soviet Union, the hockey team was used as an instrument of international politics. This meant that the players were subject to slave-like working conditions, and that questions about team lineups and tactics were as much a concern for the KGB as for the sports support system.