MovieChat Forums > Red Army (2015) Discussion > Great subject, poor delivery

Great subject, poor delivery


The subject of the documentary (Cold War hockey) is very interesting but the director has poor interviewing skills. I thought the interviews were very amateurish.






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They should've shown more footage of the Red Army actually playing. They are the greatest team in hockey history but they didn't show them enough!

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Poor delivery, superficial, sensationalized/melodramatic, and too many gimmicky effects. Interesting subject, but not a very good film.



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I disagree with you here actually. The director is actually quite skilled and I think at times intentionally gave the impression of being an amateur, which made his interview subjects more relaxed. As a result, he got some interesting reactions out of people, particularly out of Fetisov. A more formal approach would have been boring.

Some excellent editing particularly brought certain interesting aspects of the personalities for the fore.

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You do you have a point. Initially, I thought the doc was well edited and put together, but had those amateurish moments like we saw in the interview clips with Fetisov. After looking past those arrogant moments from Fetisov, in response to some of Gabe's questions, he did give genuine answers to what was asked. But if Polsky plans on making more docs in the future, he definitely needs to brush up on his interviewing/charm skills with the interviewee.

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Personally, I never take the interviewing 'skills' or otherwise of a director out of the context of the film - for me the question is - does it work? is it effective? Does s/he illicit the response that fits within the over-all narrative?

The fact that I have no interest in hockey whatsoever and yet found the documentary absolutely gripping, informative, entertaining as well as poignant, without any overt sentimentalising or overt bias, speaks volumes to me about the ability of the director to connect with his subject and tell a fascinating story.

Of course, we are all entitled to our opinion, I just think such declarative statements deserve a response and an alternate point of view.

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yea that one scene where they are like what is the cold war? and all of the crew are walking through the shot. like 'look!!! seee!!! were making a movie!!!'

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I don't think that was the movie crew. I think they were part of Russian media team trying to steer the question away from that topic. Maybe they thought if they walked through the scene and interrupted what was going on, that the scene wouldn't be put into the movie.

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I agree, I was really put off by the amateurish interviewing. A better interviewer could have gotten Krutov to divulge at least some details about their personality differences. I also felt the editing was manipulative. Fetisov was an a-hole at times but they were clearly giving him the A-Hole Edit and it really wasn't necessary. I thought this film barely scratched the surface when it came to life in the Soviet hockey system.

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A better interviewer could have gotten Krutov to divulge at least some details about their personality differences


The whole point was that there were no personality differences.

He said 'We were all the same', almost like a religious person.





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Which is entirely a bullsh*t cliche. Krutov held on to that mirage so tight that he got gruff when asked if they even had hobbies. If they were all the same then their wives would be all the same. Obviously Fetisov & Kasatonov weren't the same were they?

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