Word: bassette
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...have been in love...but they were." This movie, Winter Comes Early, should never have been made...but it was. Unfortunately, we'll be stuck with it until someone finally decides to do a little more work and come up with an incisive documentary of ice hockey. Producer John Bassett, a Canadian sportsman with financial interests in both the Maple Leafs and the Toronto Argonauts football team, never really comes close...
...Bassett's major mistake is that he even went anywhere near the story line of Love Story in the first place. In recent Boston newspaper interviews, he scorned Ryan O'Neal's performance in that film, saying that he had set ice hockey back several decades. It seems strange, then, that he would adapt the Love Story theme almost in its entirety for what he hoped would be a fresh, penetrating look at one of the two most violent games in the world...
...above sounds implausible to you, you're not alone. Yet, Bassett's original idea--to present an actual picture of life as it is around the National Hockey League--could have been salvaged. Several times, he comes close to saying something significant--about the player-agent alliance that is presently causing so much friction between labor and management, about the way a pro hockey team functions internally over the course of a season, about the contrast between aging veteran and brash rookie. But he prevents himself from covering any of these in depth by saddling himself with the hokey Love...
...would have taken a much more talented cast than Bassett recruited to bring off this documentary-romance melange with even a trace of facility, and such deserved unknowns as Trudy Young. Art Hindle and Frank Moore just can't handle it. The acting is wooden and emotionless, and George Robertson's screenplay doesn't help. The dialogue, plainly, is awful. For example: Billy, after meeting Sherri, "Hey, is she for real?" Friend: "Yeah." Maple Leafs' general manager: "What do you think of us, the hockey world?" Sherri: "Well, it's different, ya know?" GM: "Yes, different, and very special...
...effect is jarring. We are told that Duke is a superstar, but we are rarely given closeups of him in action. We are told the Maple Leafs fall apart as the season goes on, but we never see the disintegration. This is part of what Bassett has to do in order to create a valuable and lasting statement about the sport, and he sidesteps his responsibilities either by design or neglect. Such a statement can be made. Robert Redford came fairly close to it in Downhill Racer, and Bruce Brown presented creditable efforts on bike riding and surfing...