Goon
Three stars (out of four)
Rated: 18A
The very violent but also very funny Goon presents a hockey thug’s twist to Canada’s official colours.
It’s the splash of red blood against white ice that bookends this comic tribute to our other national pastime, which is watching enraged players drop gloves and go at each other.
The expression “Speak softly and carry a big stick” may be American in origin but it’s Canadian to the core.
You’d be forgiven if you thought puck poobah Don Cherry had directed Goon, since it takes hockey hooliganism to heights not seen since Slap Shot was offending the nation’s finger-waggers back in the 1970s.
The man behind the camera is in fact Michael Dowse, the Ontario-born director whose two Fubar films, about metalheads too dumb to realize how ridiculous they are, demonstrated a real affinity for hoser wild life.
Seann William Scott’s title character in Goon is actually an honourary Canadian: a small-town Massachusetts bar bouncer and genial knucklehead named Doug Glatt, who doesn’t realize his own strength or even his own shirt size. He can drop a man with one punch.
His personal motto? “I bounce.”
When Doug unleashes his fist fury in aid of his mouthy best friend (Jay Baruchel, who also shares co-writing credits with Evan Goldberg), he’s spotted by the coach of the very minor-league local team (Nicholas Campbell).
The wily coach seconds the newly christened “Doug the Thug” to play for his brother (Kim Coates), also a hockey coach, whose team the Halifax Highlanders is in dire need of a miracle.
The Highlanders’ high-scorer Xavier Laflamme (C.R.A.Z.Y.’s Marc-André Grondin) hasn’t been himself since he was slammed into the boards by the league’s biggest bruiser, Ross “The Boss” Rhea (Liev Schreiber, a casting coup).
Doug’s one and only task is to beat up anybody who stands in the way of the surly Laflamme rediscovering his mojo.
This includes Rhea, whom Doug idolizes but soon will have to fight, because that’s how these guys roll.
Doug also has to contend with Cupid’s flaming arrows, as shot by Eva (Alison Pill), the film’s only major female distraction.
Sweet-hearted Doug, well played by Scott, is proud to both draw and spill red on behalf of his team. He tells his appalled father (Eugene Levy) that he’s finally found his calling: “For once in my life I get to wear a uniform that doesn’t have ‘Security’ on it.”
No Oscars are at risk from Goon, which requires the viewer to tolerate a large amount of violence and an even greater amount of profanity. But Goon looks set to skate alongside, if not slam into the boards, the sainted memory of Slap Shot as the movie that really gets the spirit of hockey’s animal attraction.
With a big assist by editor Reg Harkema, Dowse adroitly delivers the raw power of blade on ice, fist on face and scarlet on snow.
You have to love a movie of such blunt determinism, one in which the female lead’s idea of romance is to say, “You make me want to stop sleeping with a bunch of guys.”
Oh, Canada!
Peter Howell is a syndicated Toronto Star movie critic.