Tiger Williams, the NHL’s all-time penalty minutes leader and goon supreme. (Notice the absolutely gorgeous Vancouver Canucks uniform)

A goon, for those who aren’t privy to hockey parlance, is a person whose sole role on the team is to mix it up, fight, provide one’s team with a spark of emotion when they are down and to protect a team’s scorer. Wayne Gretzky had his own personal goon who even traveled with him when he was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in Marty McSorley (who has appeared in two Jerry Bruckheimer productions – Bad Boys and Con Air). A goon’s presence on ice will allow a scorer to work more freely instead of having to worry about cheap shots coming from the other team. They know that if they cheap shot the scorer, the goon will punch their teeth through their heads.

Meet Doug Glatt’s fist.

Enough of the hockey history lesson. Goon is a simple story: Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is an outcast in his family who are all doctors. He is a bouncer at a bar, isn’t particularly bright and has no direction to his life. He and his dipshit hockey enthusiast friend Pat (Jay Baruchel, who co-wrote the script) are at the local team’s game when they heckle a thug from the opposing team enough to draw him out of the penalty box and into the crowd. Doug confronts the thug and beats him down in a matter of seconds, catching the eye of the team’s coach, who predictably invites him to try out for the team. He doesn’t know how to skate and when he steps onto the ice, his new teammates start making fun of him. So he takes matters into his own hands, literally, and beats half of them down. After plenty of work on his skating, the coach calls him into his office and tells him that his brother coaches a real minor league hockey team In Halifax who has a former #2 overall draft pick, Xavier Laflamme (Marc-André Grondin), who is trying to find his mojo after getting drilled and concussed by goon extraordinaire Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber), Doug and Pat’s idol. So, he gets sent to Halifax to try and help Laflamme recapture his talent and make a name for himself as a heavy. When Rhea gets sent down to the same league as Doug and Xavier, we anticipate two things – how will Laflamme react to being on the ice again with Rhea and the inevitable showdown between Doug and Rhea. How do you think those turned out?

Former Golden Boy Xavier Laflamme.

So this film is basically an inverted version of Bull Durham, with a touch of Happy Gilmore. There are some funny parts to it, but the abnormally subdued Seann William Scott made me want to see a more Stifler-esque approach. The clumsy, gentle giant/badass fighter guy characterization seemed off to me. It just didn’t ring true. I’m sure guys like Bob Probert and Tie Domi, among the most feared brawlers ever to skate, weren’t teddy bears off the ice. Jay Baruchel is one of the absolute most annoying people in Hollywood. I literally hate looking at him. Hearing him talk grates me to the bone and he honestly ruined How to Train Your Dragon for me. I think he is a talentless hack and that he gets paid to be on screen amazes me. His cliched character (which he wrote, by the way) is so over the top, I literally cringed every time he appeared on screen. But that’s just me. He may be the nicest person in the world. What do I know? I will say this – my heart weeps that he is portraying an Irish kid in this movie.

Doug’s love interest, Eva.

Doug’s love interest, Eva (played by Alison Pill), was a bright spot, although the slutty/nerdy girl who falls for the athlete over her safe boyfriend angle is tired. That’s the screenwriters’ fault, though. She’s fantastic in everything I’ve seen her in, especially Scott Pilgrim and Midnight in Paris as Zelda Fitzgerald.

Ross “The Boss” Rhea, Chief Goon.

Ross Rhea is where they got it right. He is a very good representation of the guy no one wants to play against, a guy who is crafty and willing to drop the gloves with anyone. Liev Schreiber absolutely nails it. He looks so much the part, he’s actually kind of scary. The conversation between him and Glatt in the restaurant is the best part of the whole movie. He delivers an extremely poignant monologue here, which is probably correct about the goon/enforcer:

“Kid, you got this thing. The stuff. The shit. The fuckin’ grit, you got it, like me. But like me, that’s all you fuckin’ got. And like me, you’re no good to anyone doing anything else. All I’m saying is don’t go trying to be a hockey player. You’ll get your fuckin’ heart ripped out.”

When these guys finally fight, it’s pretty good albeit predictable. Here’s the clip:

All in all, this is an average film. Scott, Pill and Schreiber are the high points. Being an enforcer is a lonely place, and I think to some extent, director Michael Dowse portrays that well. These guys take a beating night in and night out, frequently ending up with brain injuries that affect the rest of their lives. Former hockey enforcer Georges Laraque said this: “The worst part is not the fighting itself,…because the adrenaline kicks in and you don’t feel the blows. Instead, what weighs heaviest is the constant pressure of knowing you will have to fight another enforcer such as [Derek] Boogaard or [Wade] Belak, game after game.” Tough thing is, both Boogaard and Belak died this past year. Focus Features just picked up the rights to Boogaard‘s story, so be on the lookout for that.

Tonight, time permitting (as I help prepare my family for our first trip to Disney), I plan on watching The Last Gladiators, a new documentary by Alex Gibney (Oscar winner for Taxi to the Dark Side) about hockey enforcers. This is a time honored tradition that many have called for the abolition of. Goon does some to perpetuate this coolness of the role and its importance to some teams. Ultimately, this is just another story where someone is looking to find their place in this world. A fair effort in the hockey movie subgenre. Give it a whirl as well as the others mentioned. After all, it is Stanley Cup Playoff time.

Here’s the trailer:

]]> http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/02/21/ptl-links-feb-21-2012/ Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:57:56 +0000 caseyshea9 http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/02/21/ptl-links-feb-21-2012/ Visit the links below for more on today’s guests & topics:

• Hair Peace Charities “Recipe For Hope”
• Pittsburgh Marathon & Safe Strides Program
• The Last Gladiators
• Bodiography
• Evey True Value
• Doug Oster
• Pittsburgh Home And Garden Show
• Join Us In Our Studio Audience At The Home And Garden Show, Friday, March 1 Or March 8.
• E-Mail Us To Reserve Your Seats At Pittsburghtodaylive@KDKA.com

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - NHL enforcers have been bringing crowds to their feet for decades. But as the new documentary “The Last Gladiators” shows, there’s more strategy behind these fights than meets the eye.

Twin Cities author Ross Bernstein loves hockey, despite its dark side.

“Even here at open hockey, old-man-fat-guy hockey that I play during the day, you’ll see a scrap every now and then. And two guys will drop their gloves, and the guys will let ‘em go, and then it’s all over. And then, you know, sometimes they go drink beer,” Bernstein said.

It’s part of a culture that’s been around for 150 years. Bernstein’s book, “The Code,” details the unwritten rules of fighting and retaliation.

“For instance, you could never challenge a guy to a fight at the end of his shift because he might be tired. If a guy has fresh stitches or he lost a tooth – he gets a free pass,” Bernstein said.

The film is centered on Chris Nilan, one of the NHL’s most feared enforcers.

“That’s when I got my finger almost bit off. I ended up getting eight stitches,” said Nilan in the film.

Through Nilan, Oscar and Emmy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney shows the toll being a heavyweight takes on someone off the ice.

“They have to get up to fight every night and then they got to come down to put their kids to sleep. It’s just a bizarre job,” Bernstein said.

And it’s not just the players looking for the next fight.

“When it’s a big fight, 18,000 people stand up and cheer, and these gladiators – they go to work,” he said. “And it’s not staged like wrestling. It’s the real deal. These guys lose teeth.”

In addition to the shoves and jabs, the book explains the “why” behind the fighting. Knowing this, Bernstein says, is a critical component in the growing fight to keep youth hockey players safe.

“You play the game with respect, you’ll be treated with respect. That’s why the kids have a big red stop sign on the back of their jersey that says, ‘Stop, Think About This,’” he said.

“The Last Gladiators” premiered recently at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s currently playing at the St. Anthony Main Theater in Minneapolis.

Click here to read a review of “The Last Gladiators” at WCCO’s Movie Blog.

If anything, it’s ancient, deriving from the hormone-fueled physicality of athletic competition.

One could even argue that team sports, or any contact sport, could be taken as metaphors for war; they tell the story of battle – the glory of victory, the bitterness of defeat – without inflicting serious injury, or death, upon those who participate.

But we know now that any injury is serious for today’s pro athletes. Not only do injuries affect the player’s career in the short term, they potentially have enormous impacts on the athlete’s “normal” life, be he a father, husband or working man.

The Last Gladiators, a film by the Academy-Award-winning Alex Gibney, examines some real sports-warriors: hockey’s enforcers.

Full disclosure: I knew nothing about what enforcers did until I watched Gibney’s film. Despite growing up in Minnesota, I never learned that there is a need in hockey for fighters, tough guys, straight-up pugilists. At a basic level, their job is to let opponents know what flies. If an opponent starts getting too rough with the star players — artists on the ice, as it were – enforcers go in, whip off their gloves and start swinging.

That swinging was life for Chris “Knuckles” Nilan, the focus of the film. His skill as an enforcer won him the love of Montreal and helped his team, the Canadiens, win a Stanley Cup. But success was fleeting.

Fighting left him broken, and not just physically. Despite being amazingly tough, he couldn’t adjust his temper off the ice. He didn’t work well with coaches, and his strategy for life (something like “call it as you see it” or “beat the hell out of adversaries”) strained relationships. Then came the drugs, and all his money evaporated. Even his father, a military man, is shown in tears, regretting his son’s falling in love with hockey.

The movie looks at Nilan’s career through his own psychology as well as hockey culture. The beloved sport comes out somewhat suspect in that it has fostered an arena were brawling is routine, a strategic necessity, something as essential as the very ice.

In the documentary, Nilan is a candid storyteller. His stern mug, cockiness and crushed ice voice give his stories poignancy while also highlighting one of the film’s main points: being an enforcer isn’t for all who play hockey.

Some enforcers, the film shows, aren’t great at the game. But the tough guy thing was their only way to capture the NHL dream. Thus, they become “goons,” sent in the rink to deliver punches, not plays. Some love it. They get bloodlust from defending their teammates, making the crowd go crazy. To call them gladiators is fitting.

Others suffer. Some can only last a few fights before calling it quits. Others last longer, but uneasily. And it’s hard to forget what happened to Derek “Boogeyman” Boogaard, the former Wild enforcer who fatally overdosed in 2011. After his family donated his brain to research, scientists found he suffered from a degenerative brain condition likely caused by all the blows to the head. He was only 28.

The rink, to be clear, isn’t a coliseum. Real nasty stuff happens in fights, but most of the battles operate under a code. Call it a Bushido on ice. Typically, the fighters try not to seriously injure one another; they understand it’s a sport, that their opponents have families to feed, a job to do. Still, serving knuckle sandwiches, and eating them, day-in-day out comes at a cost.

To those unfamiliar with hockey, Gladiators may be an enlightening experience. It was for me. But for those in love with Minnesota’s favorite game — which has changed at the prep level due to local events — it could be cause for reflection, or a serious look at the rule book.

The Last Gladiators is playing at Minneapolis’ St. Anthony Main Theatre.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The hockey enforcer holds a unique position in the sports world: he’s paid to protect the more artful players on his team, and also to beat people up.

At the beginning of The Last Gladiators, a sad and telling documentary about the life of the so-called goon, ex-Montreal Canadien Chris Nilan describes the damage to his hands — a broken knuckle here, a missing one there, the finger that was almost bitten off — but says that he represented a lot of guys who wished they could have punched some co-worker in the nose. “They liked to see someone else do it,” he says.

Nilan was the man for the job: in 13 years in the National Hockey League, he had hundreds of fights and amassed more than 3,000 penalty minutes. He was an immense fan favourite in Montreal and a sort of perverse crowd-pleaser in Boston, where 17,000 people would chant “Nilan sucks” every time he hit the ice. Then he was traded to Boston, and they loved him.
Those were the glory days, and when they ended for Nilan, they ended badly. Part of this was due to the difficulty any athlete has when his career is over, and part of it is a result of his particular job.

Nilan was an aggressive youngster, always willing to tackle a big kid, and his aggression was encouraged in hockey. He was a fighter and a protector, and when it was over, he had no place to put his fight and his protection.

The Last Gladiators is a record of several hockey enforcers, and there are appearances by such legendary names as Marty McSorley and Donald Brashear, who recount the time that McSorley — angered when Brashear wouldn’t fight him, thus going against the odd code of the NHL — clubbed him in the head with his stick. McSorley didn’t mean to do it, but he had to get his attention somehow.

However, Alex Gibney, the prolific director (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room), knows a good story when he hears it, not to mention a good storyteller. The Last Gladiators is mostly about Nilan and we kind of resent it when the camera turns away to other enforcers, such as the formidable Tony Twist and the towering Bill Probert. Nilan is the one we want to see.

He’s a plainspoken man, born in Boston to a tough father (a former Green Beret who appears both heartbroken and unforgiving over his son’s later troubles.) He loved hockey, established himself as a hell-bent-for-leather fighter playing in Nova Scotia for a Canadiens farm team, and landed in Montreal with both fists flying.

He also tried to improve his hockey skills, but it was fighting that kept him in the league.

Gibney includes a brief history of hockey fighting, which was a one-person occupation until the heyday of the Big Bad Bruins, the Boston team of Bobby Orr that would swarm any opposing player who dared lay a glove on him.

That brand of intimidation was perfected by the Broad Street Bullies, the Philadelphia teams of the early 1970s. In addition, a nod is made to the 1977 film Slap Shot, which turned hockey violence into comedy: someone calls it the Casablanca of hockey goon films.

The Last Gladiators doesn’t glamorize the occupation of enforcer, but it doesn’t shy away from its importance: it acknowledges if there wasn’t a Marty McSorley, there wouldn’t have been a Wayne Gretzky because the tough guy protected the artist.

Nilan, however, seemed to be in a category of his own, not just tough but outspoken and willing to challenge his own coaches (in the film, he calls an old assistant coach “the biggest pussy ever to play the game.”)

When it ended it almost destroyed him, and the film becomes a record of collapse and, perhaps, redemption. Like most enforcers, Nilan’s greatest opponent was himself.

Checkout The Last Gladiators official trailer:

I was at the Montreal premiere of the film and had a chance to talk to Nilan about his life in the NHL & his personal struggles with drugs and alcohol after retirement.

Listen to the report which aired for CBC Daybreak Montreal on October 23, 2012

That was what a writer once dubbed The Drubbing of Nesterenko. Canadiens policeman John Ferguson pummelling Chicago Blackhawks winger Eric Nesterenko at the Montreal Forum, a memorable moment, for good or ill, in what was a 6-0 playoff victory for the Canadiens.

Couple of quick observations about the fight. It started from next door to nothing, for no real reason, unfolded violently and quickly was over. Ferguson went to the penatly box, Nesterenko, bloodied and beaten, went to the Forum clinic for what legendary announcer Danny Gallivan always called ‘repairs.’

No other players squared off, at least not for long. There was none of the scrumming and face-washing that has become commonplace in today’s game. Well, today’s game when there’s no lockout going on.

Players mostly joined in to separate the combatants, as the broadcasters say, and the whole bloody mess was over in a hurry.

At any rate, my Dad took me to that 1965 game and Fergie’s clobbering of Nesterenko was just fine with me, a young (I was 12 at the time) and passionate Habs fan.

A clip of this video is included in The Last Gladiators, a fine documentary look at the life of NHL enforcers, primarily through the eyes and experiences of Chris Nilan, Montreal’s enforcer through much of the 1980s.

Nilan is among a lengthy list of enforcers who have experienced extreme issues with addiction, to alcohol, to drugs (he became addicted to heroin after his career was over), and most insidiously, to the pain killers many must take to do their difficult job game after game after game.

Now, 47 years after Ferguson demolished Nesterenko, 20 years after Nilan retired to battle his many demons, much about the toll fighting takes on NHL enforcers has been documented, most impressively by John Branch of the New York Times.

Branch’s series on the life and death of Derek Boogaard should be required reading for anyone interested in NHL thuggery, the price players and their families pay for concussions, on and on.

Now, Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney’s documentary is an important addition to the public record about hockey’s seamy side.

Nilan, who has been touring Canada and the U.S. promoting the film, was spellbinding in a post-screening Q & A at the Edmonton screening, candid about all aspects of his up-and-down life.

The film is well worth seeing, needless to say.

Chris Nilan, subject of the documentary THE LAST GLADIATORS - Photo by Pamela Gentile

Whereas Saturday’s hot and sunny weather made the prospect of sitting in a theatre all day seem unappealing, yesterday’s heavy mist and wind was ideal conditions for staying in and watching movies.  Sadly, I was only able to see one movie due to family obligations.  As strange as it may seem, from time to time I will put family first when prioritizing my schedule.

Forever arriving earlier than is needed I left my house at 1:15 to make the 40 minute trek to Japan town.  My movie didn’t start until 4:00, but I always like to leave at an unreasonably earlier time than is necessary.  So, after stopping at House Of Bagels to inhale a tuna, lettuce and cheese on a pumpernickel bagel I arrived at the Sundance Kabuki steps.  The time was now 2:00, plenty of time for me to take in the sights.  Today these sights included a handful of middle-aged Japanese men with whistles sitting atop a handheld float wearing nothing but underwear.  Oh cool, I arrived in time to see a parade celebrating laundry day.  Much to my disappointment, I soon found out that I was watching the tail end of the Cherry Blossom festival, which still didn’t explain the tighty-whities.

After bumping into some festival friends and swapping some film recommendations it was time to get my ticket and take my seat for Alex Gibney‘s (Magic Trip, Taxi To The Dark Side) latest documentary, The Last Gladiators.

The Last Gladiators

Looking for slo-mo fist-to-face scenes?  You’ve chosen the right movie.  In telling the story of Chris “knuckles” Nilan, a man who will go down in hockey history as being one of the greatest enforcers to ever play the game director, Alex Gibney, brings us into the world of the enforcer.  Being an enforcer in hockey means if someone from another team needed their teeth knocked out Chris was the man to do it.

Gaining insight into what makes such a character tick was what drew me towards this film, yet Gibney’s execution, which consisted of cookie-cutter chapter breakdowns seemed to only distract from the film’s overall impact.  However, regardless of these unattractive aesthetics I was still able to walk away from this movie with a newfound respect for the following: The job that Nilan had to do, Nilan himself, and for all addicts and alcoholics the world over who are working to concur their disease.  Thanks for your bravery and candidness, Nilan.

One more thing before wrapping up this post.  As I was leaving the movie 2 firetrucks came speeding by me and pulled up in front of the Kabuki Theater.  I would like to go on the record officially and say that I played no role in either starting any fire or pulling any fire alarm.  I have 3 more movies to see tomorrow and if the theatre hasn’t burned down I plan on seeing them.

]]> http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2011/11/15/philippe-falardeau-to-make-documentary-on-hockey-enforcers/ Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:41:11 +0000 Brendan Kelly http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2011/11/15/philippe-falardeau-to-make-documentary-on-hockey-enforcers/ When I caught up with Philippe Falardeau on Monday, he was running around town doing his last errands before boarding the flight that night for Paris. He was headed to the City of Lights to attend the 15th edition of Cinéma du Québec à Paris, a film fest dedicated to showcasing films made chez nous for our French cousins. The fest opens with Café de Flore Tuesday night and closes with Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar Saturday.

Falardeau was in fine spirits when we talked, which was no surprise given that his fine, fine new movie Monsieur Lazhar had just made $210,000 in its third weekend in Quebec cinemas, reaching a tally of $967,000 as of Sunday night. By Tuesday afternoon, it officially passed the $1 million mark. That’s a mighty impressive stat, particularly given the fact it is only on 39 screens. Often major Quebec releases are on over 80 screens.

Falardeau is already writing a new fiction screenplay but he is also working with La Presse hockey scribe Mathias Brunet on a feature documentary about hockey enforcers. Falardeau said the documentary will likely be his next project.

The film couldn’t be more timely, following the death in recent months of three former National Hockey League enforcers: Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak. There has been discussion of the emotional toll that that these fighters have to deal with, both while toiling as the team’s tough guy and after they hang up their skates. The debate was further fueled when Don Cherry personally attacked a number of former NHL fighters.

“In spite of what you hear in the news, in spite of the deaths, there are still young hockey players who believe the best way to make it into the National Hockey League is by fighting in the American Hockey League,” said Falardeau. “So I want to look at these players in the film. I want the film to focus on players before they get into the NHL and after they leave the NHL. Because for the during-the-NHL part, all you have to do is turn on TSN or RDS. It’s before and after that interests me.”

Falardeau said he is definitely interested in talking to well-known NHL enforcers for the film and one of those might well be former Boston Bruin and Montreal Canadien pugilist Chris Nilan. But first Falardeau wants to see the critically-acclaimed documentary The Last Gladiators, which focuses on Knuckles Nilan, to make sure he doesn’t cover the same ground as that film, which had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

“I’ve already talked to three or four players,” said Falardeau. “They’re often full of anxiety. They have headaches, they’re nervous.”

Falardeau is not a fan of hockey fights but he’s fascinated by the idea of exploring the lives of these professional athletes who make a living by pounding each other out on the ice.

“I really like professional sports,” said Falardeau. “I watch NFL and CFL football. I watch hockey. I don’t like fights. But there’s something very touching about athletes. When a high-level athlete comes to the end of his career, I always find that very moving. I remember Agassi’s last game. I was crying in my living room. You watch press conferences with NHL players retiring and it’s always very emotional. They’re told to be macho, to not show emotion when they play and then at the end of their careers, you see they’re just like us. That they have emotions. And that interests me. How they have to suppress their emotions.”

The film will be produced by Vincent Gourd from the production company B-612 Communications.

“We want to show the men behind the gladiators,” said Brunet, who first began thinking about making the film after he wrote a biography of former Habs tough guy Dave Morissette. “The enforcers are starting to open up and talk about the effects of being an enforcer. But we don’t want to show the fights. We don’t have to.”

The documentary has already been sold to the French-language specialty channel Canal D.

Fighter Chris Nilan devoted his body and soul to protecting his teammates for 15 seasons in the NHL. (Denis Brodeur/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

If fans embrace Slap Shot as the Casablanca of hockey films, The Last Gladiators is Apocalypse Now, a descent into the game’s heart of darkness. Here, the hockey fighters’ story doesn’t trace cartoon lives of triumphant heroes who engage in laugh-a-minute punchouts that end in a championship parade. This documentary shows the aftermath, the tough guys’ dénouement, as their lives — and the role they played — dissolve in a unique mixture of regret, shame, pride, self-destruction, and nostalgia.

Slap Shot was a film of its time that provided — and still provides — the hockey community with the laughs. The Last Gladiators is the sobering counterpoint, more in the tradition of some of Hollywood’s great ring tragedies from Requiem For A Heavyweight to The Wrestler.

Directed by Alex Gibney, an Oscar, Emmy, Peabody, and Grammy award-winning documentarian, this film could not be more timely as it peers into the troubled lives of former NHL fighters. Centered around Chris Nilan, who for 13 seasons was one of the NHL’s most feared heavyweights, the film explores the job he and his pugilist peers did, why they did it, the role is serves in the sport, and the toll it took on their lives.

It will be uncomfortable viewing for those who prefer to see hockey enforcers as one-dimensional entertainers. At the same time, Gibney traces the game’s longstanding penchant for frontier justice, the origin of fighting and why it continues to have a role in the sport — mainly the need for teams to protect their star players from physical intimidation and potential injury. And he doesn’t neglect the appeal it has for a segment of fans. “The hockey fan needs fighting,” David Singer of Hockeyfights.com tells the camera.” It’s an adrenaline rush.”

But the lives of the fighters are what interests Gibney most, and the Boston-born Nilan is a most compelling subject. Gibney opens the film by showing Nilan’s hands, and especially his battered knuckles. Nilan’s nickname was (and is) “Knuckles” and the role he played in the NHL seemed to fit his personality. He was a scrapper from youth. The son of a Green Beret soldier, Nilan fell in love with the sport, brawled his way into a collegiate career and became an unlikely last round draft choice of the Canadiens in 1978. “Yankee Boy,” his first Montreal coach Claude Ruel called him, and with an appealing mixture of humor and harsh truth, Nilan tells the story of his rise and fall as a Boston tough guy who becomes a star for the enemy team.

Ruel and others in Montreal schooled him in the game’s finer points and Nilan developed into a very credible NHLer, a rarity among enforcers. From the days of the 1970s Flyers – the Broad Street Bullies – teams employed players whose sole purpose was to fight. They might play only a few minutes a game, with their offensive statistics negligible, especially compared to their penalty minutes.

That wasn’t Nilan. A very effective checking forward for the Canadiens, he skated on a line with two of the best defensive forwards ever, Bob Gainey and Guy Carbonneau. He scored 16, 21 and 19 goals in three consecutive seasons, including the Stanley Cup campaign of 1985-86. Nilan also skated for Team USA in the 1987 Canada Cup, scoring twice. But he was a fighter, a very good one, who backed down from no one and wouldn’t stop fighting even when urged to do so, as he was by then-Canadiens advisor Jacques Lemaire, who encouraged Nilan to focus more on being a good player.

But Nilan had noticed while watching the Bruins as a kid that fighters who stopped fighting didn’t last long in the NHL. So he didn’t stop. He never had second thoughts about protecting smaller teammates when bigger opponents tried to intimidate them. If some mayhem ensued, all the better. Gibney incorporates this 1986 episode in Boston Garden, where fans hated Nilan most of all, into the film.

It’s one of many Nilan masterpieces. He loved his job, loved Montreal, the Canadiens and the adulation he received from their fans. But part of Nilan’s nature and identity was to defend those who he felt needed defending and that ran him afoul of Canadiens coach Jean Perron, who Nilan felt treated him and some teammates unfairly. That led to his being traded to the Rangers in December 1988. It was a shock from which Nilan never recovered.

Playing in New York and later Boston, of all places, was never quite the same. Even though fans who once booed him now cheered him, Nilan confesses that his heart wasn’t in it, although he still dropped the gloves when the situation called for it. However, the combination of age and injuries diminished his playing time and, after a run-in with Bruins coach Rick Bowness, Boston cut Nilan loose. The Habs picked him up again for a curtain call, but he called it quits in 1992.

From there, Nilan describes his restless, aimless decline. He couldn’t hold a job, became addicted to painkillers after undergoing at least two dozen surgeries while playing, got into rehab, relapsed and went further into addiction with heroin. Tearful interviews with his family, including his clearly embarrassed father, chronicle their distraught reaction to his plight. A second stint in rehab seems to have worked and Nilan appears clear-eyed as he reflects throughout the film on where his life as taken him and why.

Nilan may be the central character, but Gibney wants to make the point that his story is not an exception. He punctuates the chapters of Nilan’s life with interviews of other former enforcers like Donald Brashear, who can’t stop playing and continues fighting in a Quebec semi-pro league; Tony Twist, who crashed his motorcycle after learning the Blues were not renewing his contract, never played again, and is unable today to find anything that comes close to providing him the joy that fighting in the NHL did; and Marty McSorley, whose protection allowed Wayne Gretzky to flourish in both Edmonton and Los Angeles, but whose stick-whack to Brashear’s head in 2000 resulted in a criminal conviction and the end of his playing career. None of them fell as far as Nilan, but all fell nevertheless.

No one, not even Nilan, paid a steeper price for this career  than Bob Probert, perhaps the best fighter of the era and a very credible player. A friend and foe of Nilan, Probert was also interviewed by Gibney, who later filmed a grim Nilan at Probert’s funeral. While not part of the movie, it was later learned that Probert, who died from heart failure, also had CTE, the degenerative brain condition that can be caused by repeated blows to the head.

And yet, while some fighters today, in this film and in other accounts, say they hated the job, some Gibney interviewed, including Twist and Lyndon Byers,  not only have no regrets, but loved fighting. It’s a point to keep in mind when we read stories that claim enforcers play their role reluctantly.

This is very good documentary film-making by a talented director. It’s well-paced, well-shot and has an important story to tell.

The Last Gladiators premiered this month at the Toronto Film Festival where it got generally good reviews. Nilan was singled out by reviewers as, in the words of David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter,  “a compellingly rough-hewn central figure.” He appeared at one showing and got a standing ovation from the audience afterward, which reportedly brought him to tears.

The film is not in general distribution and it’s uncertain what the plans are for wider release. Some critics who have seen it believe it won’t find an audience apart from sports fans and maybe not even beyond hockey fans. As far as Nilan is concerned, he told Mutsumi Takahashi of CTV Montreal on Tuesday (video) that he’d be happy if every NHL player saw it. “There’s definitely a message that it can happen to you, it can happen to anybody,” he said. “It will definitely open their eyes.”

Especially those who, like Chris Nilan,  have given their body and soul to the game.

The six screenings I attended can be placed under three categories: The Good, the Bad and the Zombies.  Because everybody needs a little Sergio Leone in their lives from time to time…

The Good

Sons of Norway.  A side-splitting Norwegian punk-rock coming-of-age story, featuring the music of the Sex Pistols and a cameo from Mr. Rotten himself, who also showed up at the screening.  Great stuff!

The Last Gladiators.  A gripping documentary about the hockey goon centred around ex-Habs star Chris “Knuckles” Nilan, but featuring candid interviews with other former fighters as well.  This one’s actually showing one last time tomorrow nite at 9:15.  Well worth the price of admission, if there are any tickets left.  Should win the People’s Choice Documentary award in my humble opinion.

Goon.  Although the sight of Seann William Scott on skates may seem a little strange, he stars in this Michael Dowse-directed film as a kind-hearted hockey scrapper who fights his way up to the top minor league.  I’d imagine this one will get some sort of theatrical run north of the border, but I didn’t mind paying a couple extra bucks to see the premiere–even if I was seated way off to the right of the screen.

The Bad

Play.  This Swedish film just didn’t resonate with me, for whatever reason.  A true-life tale of teenage bullying, it left me feeling cold and detached in spite of the subject matter.  There is a recurring scene with a crib on the train that, while mildly humourous, doesn’t add anything to the storyline, yet they kept going back to it for comic effect.  (A bit of levity, perhaps?)  The ending scene is also slightly strange, to say the least.

Hard Core Logo II.  My curiosity drove me to see this film, despite the strong belief that a sequel to Hard Core Logo should never have been produced.  An egotistical attempt at an art film with a tenuous connection to the original, bringing back the great Bucky Haight (played by Julian Richings) as a record producer and with Toronto band Die Mannequin replacing the Hardcores.  Bruce McDonald reprises his role as the documentary filmmaker while also casting himself as the ever-present narrator, unlike in the original, where his on-screen presence was minimal.  If McDonald really wanted to reuse the name, he should have called his last film, Trigger–which I quite liked, actually–Hard Core Logo II and renamed this one Die Mannequin!  Kill!  Kill! (or something like that), ditching the Joe Dick Exorcist bullshit in the process.

The Zombies

Juan of the Dead.  The first zombie film ever shot in Cuba, Juan is certainly more like Shaun, rather than Dawn of the Dead.  It follows two loveable losers and their offspring as a zombie outbreak strikes the communist country.  There is plenty of Cuban-spiced humour on tap, like the state TV news anchor who keeps referring to the zombies as political dissidents paid by the Americans, or the mass exodus of homemade rafts from the island.  An interesting new take on a classic horror theme.

The 2011 festival began on Thursday with a showing of From the Sky Down, a U2 documentary by acclaimed director Davis Guggenheim, which you’d think would be the festival’s predominant storyline. I mean, remember how insane the media got after Gilbert Brule picked up Bono hitchhiking? There were civil wars that got less coverage than that.

But even with the U2 presence, a trio of hockey flicks caught the attention of TIFF attendees and created a large amount of media buzz. From the Associated Press:

One of the country’s national sports, hockey is the subject of three films at the prestigious cinema showcase, which opened Thursday and runs through next weekend.

“The Last Gladiators” from Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) premiered Friday, offering a portrait of punch-throwing hockey enforcers such as former Montreal Canadiens brawler Chris Nilan.

Premiering Saturday were Michael Dowse’s “Goon,” featuring co-writer Jay Baruchel, Seann William Scott and Liv Schreiber in a the tale of a gentle-spirited hockey enforcer, and Robert Lieberman’s “Breakaway,” whose cast includes Rob Lowe as coach of a misfit team of Sikh-Canadians trying to make their mark in Toronto hockey circles.

“We’re trying to single-handedly create the hockey movie as a genre to match the Western,” festival co-director Cameron Bailey said. “We haven’t had a lot of hockey movies in Canadian filmmaking, but it seems like suddenly, they’re exploding, so we’re just going to ride that as long as we can.”

Here’s the trailer for Goon, starring Stiffler as Doug Glatt (the goon).

Gotta admit, I’m rather intrigued by this one. Michael Dowse is the guy responsible for both FUBAR movies and It’s All Gone Pete Tong, which gave us unforgettable characters like Terry, Deaner and the Coke Badger.

Next, here’s the trailer for Breakaway, starring Rob Lowe (in a subtle nod to his Youngblood days), Russell Peters, Ludacris (OMG!), Drake (OMG!!) and Noureen DeWulf, wife of Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller.

Even though this looks a helluva lot like the male hockey version of Bend it Like Beckham, Russell Peters is funny and Rob Lowe is a tall drink of water, isn’t he ladies? You could cut cheese on those cheekbones.

Finally, The Last Gladiators. Hours of Internet scouring failed to unearth a trailer, so here’s an excerpt of David Rooney’s review for The Hollywood Reporter:

Gibney opens the film with striking images of Nilan’s battered hands in close-up as he displays his scars, his smashed knuckles and bitten fingers. He reveals later that he has had 26 different surgeries as a result of hockey injuries, and his issues with violence and substance abuse evidently are common to a lot of enforcers off the ice.

The film aims to breathe sad nobility into its portrait of the obsolete warrior unsure what to do with his fighting instincts out in the real world. There’s no shortage of pathos in Nilan’s story. While details of his marriage and divorce appear to have been taken off the table for discussion, he is an articulate and candid subject, speaking freely about his mistakes and his struggle to overcome his demons. Nilan’s father, a classic Boston-Irishman with a hard-ass demeanor and an unembarrassed emotional streak, is also quite moving, acknowledging the shame he felt after his son’s wave had crested and the downward spiral began.

Sounds intriguing. The only issue now is figuring out how to see some of these hockey movies. Currently, none of them are slated to show at the Vancouver Film Festival (Sept. 28-Oct 14) but perhaps one or more will make it as a late addition. Hey, we can always hope. Right now the VIFF is only featuring five sports flicks, one of which is the Steve Nash documentary.

After seeing Owen Wilson, I kept waiting for the trailer to get funny. Then I was like “Oh, wait…this is serious.” Kinda threw me off kilter.

For the uninitiated, in the sport of Hockey every team has at the very minimum at least one enforcer on their roster.  To better understand what exactly an enforcer’s role in the sport is, try to visualize an elementary school playground.  Divide the children into three groups: bullies, stars, and the friends.  The bullies pick on the stars out of jealousy, and it’s the job of the friends to protect those stars.  The enforcer is essentially the professional sports version of that kid on the playground.  As the game of hockey evolved team’s began to add one or two particularly strong players who wern’t afraid to fight the opposing team should it be required of them to the roster.  Whenever an opposing player is noted as being a douche, it’s the job of the enforcer to step in and give him a bit of a reality check in the form of a couple of punches.  Since this strategy came into being it has been allowed, and sometimes even encouraged by the NHL and it’s fans.  Employing the same mentality of the ancient Romans, there exist hockey fans who will go see live games on a frequent basis just to see the fighting and bloodshed.

During the 80s the enforcer game was at it’s peak.  The Philadelphia Flyers assembled a team that consisted of an unheard of number of enforcers — one, sometimes two for every line.  This allowed them to play a highly aggressive style game, leading to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships and the nickname “The Broadstreet Bullies”.  To combat this new style of play other teams were forced to add more tough guys to the roster.  And it was out of this new style of heightened aggression that the focus of The Last Gladiators, Chris Nilan, was drafted into the NHL.

The film follows Nilan’s story from childhood, to retirement, to the after effects of losing the only job he knew how to do.  Because enforcers are typically not the greatest hockey players, they’re often used as punching bags to drum up the crowd and control the game.  This, as I’m sure you can imagine, has a plethora of adverse effects.  While there is the obvious physical strain, there is also the potential for deep-seeded mental issues when your job consists solely of punching, or being punched yourself.  Fighting provides an adrenaline high unlike any other, so much so that fighters often become addicted to it, having to turn to other less legal highs once they retire.  Once he had laced up his skates for the last time, Chris became addicted to painkillers, and eventually turned to heroin.

The Last Gladiators is a story about finding the strength to carry on once you’ve become a stranger to the world around you.  Chris Nilan had every motivation to just give up, he had lost the only job he had ever loved, was left by his long time wife, had a father who was ashamed of his existence, and was battling a heroin addiction.  But through sheer force of will he persevered, fought through his issues, and now he’s had an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker make a movie about his life.

When asked why he chose Chris Nilan as the subject of his film in the Q&A after it’s screening, Alex Gibney answered that “Chris is a storyteller.  He’s the kind of guy that at one moment can be on the verge of breaking in to tears discussing a profound moment in his life, and in the next making a hilarious joke about how weak the “Mighty” Ducks are.” and in every single way, he’s correct.  Chris Nilan is the type of person you would refer to as a “character”, he talks in a thick Bostonian accent, is prone to fall into fits of joke-filled rambling, and through the conversations he taped with Alex Gibney is able to craft a story that is profound, interesting, funny, and moving.

The Last Gladiators was a truly great documentary, following the career and post-hockey struggles of ex-Habs enforcer Chris “Knuckles” Nilan, while taking a broader look at that side of the game by interviewing tough guys like Terry O’Reilly, Tony Twist and the late Bob Probert.  (They also shot footage of Probert’s funeral.)  We even got both sides of the McSorely/Brashear incident from the men themselves.  Incidentally, when they shot Brashear, he was playing semi-pro hockey in Quebec, and the film crew got access to one of his games, as well as a day in the life of another not-so-famous minor-league fighter.

Nilan himself was in attendance, even for the 9:15 am second screening of the film.  Walking on crutches, you could tell he’s had a rough time, but he was just as dynamic in person as when you saw him on film.  He even showed a bit of distaste for Gary Bettman, who he feels is trying to take fighting out of hockey, warning that if you take it out of the game–and piss off all those Canadians and the American rednecks who watch hockey–it’ll be hard to put it back in.

My second screening of the day was a big premiere event, though hardly a black-tie affair.  The movie Goon, directed by Michael Dowse of FUBAR fame (fuckin’ giver eh!) is based on the autobiography of real-life minor-league scrapper Doug “The Thug” Smith and stars Seann William Scott of American Pie fame in the leading role.  Though I haven’t read the book, it’s safe to say that Dowse and the crew did their homework after having seen a documentary about the real deal.  At one point, the antagonist Ross Rhea (a tribute to Rob Ray, perhaps?) is suspended for a McSorely-like stick-swinging incident, and there is definitely a Gretzky/McSorely relationship between Scott and Marc-André Grondin, who stars as a cocky, Ovechkin-inspired Québecois star player who’s lost his touch after suffering a big hit to the head.  (Sidney Crosby, anyone?)

Although the on-ice action is pretty true-to-life, the locker-room and bus-ride scenes pay homage to Slap Shot while clearly showing that this movie was directed by the same guy who did FUBAR.  Some of the supporting cast, like the pill-popping goalie from Saskatchewan and the two wisecracking Russians are pure comic gold!

For the record, I gave The Last Gladiators a perfect five points on my People’s Choice ballot, while Goon got a four.  Great movie, but sometimes there ain’t nothing like the real thing, and The Last Gladiators is worthy of the People’s Choice Award in my humble opinion.