Written by: Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg
Directed by: Michael Dowse
I've never been a huge sports fan. While my family always made sure to watch football and baseball whenever possible, I had zero interest in such shenanigans, preferring to stick to finer and far more sophisticated ventures, such as comic books, video games, and, ironically, professional wrestling.
In fact, it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I went to my first hockey game with my father. Having never even seen a game of the notoriously violent winter sport on television (unless childhood viewings of The Mighty Ducks count), I was in for a huge surprise in regards to how much I loved it. The intensity and lightning-fast pace immediately grew on me, not to mention the signature fisticuffs between unruly players. Sure, it was hypermasculine ridiculousness to a "T", but upon leaving, I couldn't deny what an absorbing and strangely poetic experience the so-called "fastest game on Earth" was.
But even though I was impressed by all the facets of the game, what appealed to me the most were the fights: mostly notably, those instigated by the teams' unofficial enforcers, or "goons", whose sole purpose was to take out any opposing team member gunning for important players on the goon's team. While the concept of the goon has been derided by hockey critics, it begs the question: is being a goon a thankless, expendable existence, or do they serve as an integral cog in the team's machinery?
Luckily, we get an unsung hero story in the form of director Michael Dowse's Goon, a funny, brutal, and surprisingly sweet-natured comedy that certainly gives the goon his due.
Massachusetts native Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a good-natured but less-than-intelligent bouncer working at a local bar, and he's really good at what he does. But despite his natural skill at knocking hooligans out with brute efficiency, he still lives in the disappointed shadow of his father (Eugene Levy), who, like Doug's brother Ira (David Paetkau), is a successful doctor.
Attending a minor league hockey game with his vulgar, hockey webcast-hosting buddy Pat (Jay Baruchel), Doug defends Pat after the latter taunts a surly player from the visiting team. Witnessing how easily Doug beat up the hockey player, the home team's coach offers Doug a spot as the team's "enforcer", where his sole purpose is to brawl with opposing players sniffing out Doug's comrades. Doug quickly becomes a hit, and is quickly sent up to Halifax, Nova Scotia to serve as the enforcer for the local Highlanders team, which is currently suffering from a major losing streak.
It turns out that Doug is needed to protect Highlander member Xavier Laflamme (Marc-Andre Grondin), a former star prospect who three years earlier was concussed by legendary enforcer Ross "The Boss" Rhea (Liev Schreiber). The concussion left Laflamme traumatized, where he sunk into a delinquent and drug-filled funk that he's never fully recovered from. Doug's skills make him hugely popular with the Nova Scotian fans, and even attracts the attention of hockey groupie Eva (Alison Pill).
Despite his parents voicing their displeasure with his new profession-- not to mention gaining the ire of a jealous Laflamme-- Doug is steadfast in his goal at achieving greatness, especially when he's locked in the sights of Rhea, recently returning from a 20-game suspension and deadset on taking down Doug should they ever meet on the ice.
Vulgar, foul-mouthed hockey comedies are truly few and far between these days-- especially considering that the last film that probably bore those adjectives was the great 1977 Paul Newman-starrer Slap Shot, which also centered on a minor league hockey ensemble that focuses on the sport's more violent aspects. But while it probably won't have the same legacy as that previous classic, Goon comes pretty damn close.
Written by Pineapple Express scribe Evan Goldberg and co-star Jay Baruchel (and loosely based on the true story of real-life minor league goon Doug Smith), Goon could have been a standard, by-the-numbers sports comedy, possibly bogged down by Adam Sandleresque gimmickry and nonstop fart jokes. And while very few non-profanities get a word in edge-wise here, there's very little cartoonish padding here, which is a pleasant relief.
Instead, we get an underdog story whose underdog you couldn't root more for, thanks to an incredibly sweet and sincere performance by Seann William Scott, who takes a break from his usual alpha-male fratboy roles best personified by his breakthrough role in the American Pie series. Despite his near-robotic finesse in beating the piss out of anyone in his sights, Doug is nonetheless decent, kind, exceedingly well-mannered, and unwaveringly loyal to his team. His lack of book smarts doesn't seem to mar his hero's journey, either: he's essentially Forrest Gump meets Wayne Gretzky. It's a revelatory performance, and gives the film every single ounce of its heart and soul.
In fact, Scott's character's dimwitted-yet-sweet demeanor makes for a major chunk of the film's comedy. Whether it's his poor attempts at making insulting comebacks, his persistent sportsmanlike attitude in a sport where sportsmanship is essentially nonexistent, or his sheer joy of getting to do what he does best-- hitting people-- Doug makes for one of the best underdog characters in recent cinema history.
And what's best about the performance is that it feels naturalistic instead of blatant comedy fodder. There's no Judd Apatow-style broad-comedy flourishes here (save for Baruchel's character, and one or two minor characters on the Highlanders team), and the rest of the cast deliver amusing performances, even if they don't stack up to Scott's. Liev Schreiber is great as the world-weary goon who, despite sharing mutual respect with Doug, can't wait to mop the ice with Doug's body. There's a great scene between the two where they meet in a diner, wherein Schreiber essentially lays down the cold, hard truth about the relevance of a goon in a hockey player's world. Despite being a comedy, it's a tense scene, one that would lead up to the climactic knockout brawl between the two.
And yes, being a movie about hockey, the action is pretty brutal. A far cry from feel-good hockey flicks like Mighty Ducks or Miracle, the fight scenes are jarringly hardcore, and sometimes even tough to watch. The shaky-cam, over-the-shoulder shots are pretty damn effective, and the blood and teeth fly at breakneck velocity, making you forget at times that you're still watching a comedy.
But the juxtaposition between the extreme violence and the terrific performance by Scott works perfectly here. Like my first real-life experience with the game of hockey, I never expected to enjoy Goon as much as I did. Probably one of the best sports movies I've seen in the last several years, Goon is a comedic slapshot to both the funny bone and the heart.
Letter Grade: "A-"
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