top of page

Review: "Red Penguins"

  • Writer: Jennifer Green
    Jennifer Green
  • Aug 4, 2020
  • 1 min read

Updated: Aug 22, 2021

This is a fascinating and entertaining tale that's more about Russian history than Russian hockey. If you're looking for the latter, try Red Army, the 2015 documentary by the same Russian American director, Gabe Polsky.

Red Penguins' narrative arc neatly parallels both Boris Yeltsin's presidency and the emotional experience of the Americans involved in the Russian hockey team -- from the excitement of reinventing a beloved national franchise at the dawn of Russia's '90s-era democracy, to the thrill of puzzling out a new culture with wildly successful marketing campaigns, to the eventual realization that rampant corruption and criminal activity would cut the entire venture short.

The story isn't told exclusively from the Americans' perspective, and the Russians interviewed -- including journalists, a reputed mafioso, former KGB agents and military officers, and people involved with the hockey team -- offer mixed recollections of the same experiences.


Polsky does an impressive job exploring his sources' personalities, and perhaps even probing their authenticity, leaving the camera on them as they react to their own stories, often with evident emotion concerning the relationships, people, hopes, and dreams left behind.


 

Read the full review at Common Sense Media.


Comments


 

A note about privacy: This web is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to share our content you. We do not share personal information with third-parties nor do we store information we collect about your visit to this blog for use other than to analyze content performance through the use of cookies, which you can turn off at any time by modifying your Internet browser's settings. We are not responsible for the republishing of the content found on this blog on other web sites or media without our permission. All art and posters from films used on this site are sourced from distributors where possible, and always represent official art released for press coverage of films. Other images are original. Please contact me directly with questions. This privacy policy is subject to change without notice.

bottom of page