COMCAST Cable Guide Says:
"Kings Ransom - chronicling the 1988 trade of hockey star Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings."
I am not a hockey guy....and I never have been...i've never strapped on a pair of skates I went to my first ever LIVE NHL game this past March and I can barely name 6 CURRENT Boston Bruins (oboy...um, Bergeron, Sturm, Tim Thomas, Lucic....fuck...Phil Kessel was traded.....ok...you see my point here.) I blame this mostly on the Popkin's not being a winter-sport family.....
Anyhow, I have absolutely nothing against the sport, and in fact one of the biggest surprises to me since starting at ESPN is finding out just how many truly devoted NHL fans there still are. Gut punches like the 2004-05 NHL strike, the lack of a major TV deal and unofficial removal of membership from "The Big Four Proffesional Sports" has only made hockey fans MORE ravenous.
So with a framework of hockey ignorance and respect, what did The Great One even mean to me going in?
Well first off, in 1988, the year Gretzky was traded, I was 5 years old. So I have literally NO memories of Gretzky as a Edmonton. On the flip side, as a child of the 90's....I was in the DIRECT wheelhouse of the Gretzky/LA King/#99/Great One Marketting blitz.
Just how marketting blitzy? Um...Anyone remember the old Saturday Morning cartoon "Pro Stars?" Gretzky effing fought crime alongside Michael Jordan and BO JACKSON!!
Thats right MJ and Bo Jackson. And truthfully, thats all an 8 Year Old like me knew. If this guy was appearing in every issue of my Sports Illustrated for Kids AND was badass enough to hang in cartoons with MJ and Bo.....well thats pretty much as big as you get!
As a Hockey-ignorant youth, I was plenty happy to float through the rest of the 90's worshipping the Braves, watching Ren and Stimpy and listening to Blues Traveler while respecting Number 99's greatness with same casual respect I'd pay to his iconic-athlete peers Joe Montana, Andre Agassi or Kristy Yamaguchi.... and I'd do it with with no care or knowledge about the man's early days with Edmonton.
The Review:
***SPOILER ALERT*** I'm not sure this really qualifies as a spolier because what I'm about to tell you happened almost 20 years ago, and is very public knowledge.....but here it is...
Did you know that the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1990? I only bring this up, because this little historical factoid pretty much negates ANY and ALL possible intrigue that this docu-story could possibly ever drum up. Seriously.....how could any rational human possibly blame the Oilers owner for trading the Great One to L.A, when the Oilers would end up winning the whole damn thing 2 years later WITHOUT him....meanwhile, in LA, Gretzky is carrying a busted King's team through the playoffs, only getting to the Stanley Cup Finals ONCE. Thanks for the memories!
Now that i've dropped that little knowledge-nugget on you, I suppose we should praise director Peter Berg for stating this key information in the final 30 seconds of the film via those traditional "this is what happanned years later" title sequences.....at least he smart enough to know this information would really serve to distract us from his story.
So what WAS Berg going for?
90% of the the film is very straightforward and is mainly told objectively by three men: Wayne Gretzky himself, Former Edmonton Oilers Owner Peter Pocklington, and Former Kings Owner Bruce McNall. This is how the major players were portrayed......
Wayne Gretzky: hockey jesus. Soft spoken canadian gentleman by day, leader of uber-stacked 80's dynasty Oilers by night. Fresh off Edmonton's 4th Cup, in the midst of his prime and looking to become the highest paid player....if only the Oilers could re-negotiate his contract.
Peter Pocklington: affable owner, businessman who despite all attempts from by the fans of Edmonton, really didnt fit the same villanous characterazation of Harry Frazee (the infamous Red Sox GM who sold Babe Ruth to the yankees.) Pocklington has Gretzky under contract for two more years, and would like nothing more than to re-neg a longterm contract.
Bruce McNall: LA businessman, also affable, who really pretty much falls into a "right place at the right time" as he takes over the franchise from Lakers owner Jerry Buss who had originally expressed intressed in acquiring Gretzky.
The City of Edmonton: underrepresented in the film, small market, put on the map by Gretzky and 4 stanley cups. Edmonton apparently follows hockey as intently 12 months a year the way America intently watches the Olympics for 2 weeks every four years. (gretzky's analogy, not mine)
Janet Jones Gretzky: beautiful fledgling LA actress, star of Police Academy 5 and apple of Wayne's eye. partially blamed by Edmonton as being a "jezebel" who convinced Gretzky to leave. I literally only mention her because i think we should bring back the term "jezebel" to describe attractive women who may appear to have alterior motives. (quick tangent....theres also a hilarious moment in the documentary, there is home-video footage of the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Gretzky take a post-nuptuals limo ride through a crowded downtown Edmonton....and you can clearly hear this little kid in the crowd yell "Hey Janet! I saw Police Academy 5, it was awesome!!" Watch this documentary for that, if nothing else....)
What was so frustrating about watching this story unfold was how little meat there was on this bone. Personally, I've become numb to the notion of Team/Ownership loyalty. We've been in the era of free agency for almost 40 YEARS!!! Loyalty in pro sports is as only good as your Jerry McGuire super agent.
and the fact is.....the story was about as typical a story one can have about a player deciding to leave a town.
The story of the trade was just too neat and tidy, and as we find out throughout the doc, Wayne had as many reasons to leave for LA as Pockington had to trade him.....coupled with an opportunistic Kings owner who was willing to spend the prospects and $ to turn The LA Kings into the hottest ticket in town.
(Side note....maybe the funnest part of the documentary was seeing all the early 90's Movie Stars rink-sidem in the locker room and mugging for the camera in true "just there to be seen fashion"....I saw Kevin Costner, John Candy, Tony Dana, Michael J. Fox and if you had REALLY eagle-eyes like me, a young Kate Hudson whooping it up next to her mom Goldie Hawn)
The film shines brightest when we get to re-live Gretzky's tear-filled press conference where he says good-bye to Edmonton (Just after he was given one last chance to nix the deal we're told)
The only other real morsel of tension and angst comes when Gretzky is asked by the director how many championships he won with Kings (answer: zero) and how many mre he thinks he could have won if he stayed in Edmonton (answer: four)
What would I have liked to see?? For starters, how about an angle? was this a series of fortunate or unfortunate events?? I think the "facts, just the facts" approach was a good one in thoery,
especially for a story that had little intrigue. But the objective presentation of the facts don't ever allow you feel personally connected to this landmark moment in Hockey history.
If there were three aspects that i felt were underplayed in the film it was A) the fans and the city of Edmonton B) the cultural impact of Wayne Gretzky coming to america. C) How was it that the Kings were the only team involved in the bidding war
The Bottom Line:
Technically speaking, King's Ransom is a well made documentary, and is everything it promises to be in Comcast's one sentance cable guide description...but its not much more. Cue the music and end the review because there's is very very VERY little else to add about this film's overall story. While Berg manages very capably summarize the Gretzky trade....there aren't nearly enough personal accounts from the fans of Edmonton, nor is there enough attention paid to answering the question: what was the lasting impact of the Gretzky trade? And what would LA and Edmonton be like if the deal never happened??
6.5 Bo Jackson's out of 10
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