Slap Shot

Director: George Roy Hill

1977 / 123min / 35mm

This beer-guzzling bad-sportsmanship movie to which all imitators aspire features Paul Newman, at the pinnacle of his stardom, as Reggie “Reg” Dunlop, the graying player-coach of the Chiefs, a minor league hockey team in a Nowheresville, Pennsylvania mill town who start to draw sellout crowds when their leader lets the psychotic, bespectacled Hanson Brothers onto the ice, inspiring “Reg” to retool the team as a rampaging goon squad. The outrageous script, courtesy Nancy Dowd (Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains), is nasty, brutish, and hilarious, while Allen’s shrewd cutting—including unmatched employment of reaction shots—speaks volumes about the cathartic appeal of violent spectacle.