Those following this blog and my slightly obsessive Facebook account know that I'm a hardcore basketball fan (and now a columnist). Since I'm Canadian though, I'm also a pretty serious hockey fan. It's part of our default setting really, just walk into any Canadian bar during the winter and turn on the television to Hockey Night in Canada and people will start turning towards the screens like sunflowers. The sport has changed a lot though since Gary Bettman took over in the 1990s and the iconic enforcers are becoming a dying breed. THE LAST GLADIATORS is a documentary following the career of iconic enforcer Chris Nilan and breaks down this often misunderstood part of our national sport.
Chris Nilan was the enforcer for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1980s, a chaotic decade of hockey where the profession was most pertinent. Nilan was an American kid from Massachussets (the Boston Bruins are the Montreal Canadiens' arch rivals in hockey) that almost went undrafted and ended up in the mecca of hockey. He fought his way up the ranks with his two fists and ended up being taken under the wing of the teams' best players and becoming a multidimensional contributor himself. THE LAST GLADIATORS doesn't stop when the glory fades though as it explores Nilan's dark and lonely road to self-destruction once he walked away from the sport.
The Chris Nilan storyline is just one angle THE LAST GLADIATORS is exploring. It's werid because the movie is not well structured at all. There is a more historical angle covering hockey enforcers from the 1970s to early 2000s, but these segments are randomly interweaved between the Chris Nilan interviews as a way to gain perspective on the movie's protagonist. It's too bad, because I thought these were the most interesting statement and yet they're just random, scattered interviews with iconic enforcers such as Terry O'Reilly, Tony Twist, Todd Ewen and Patron Saint of the profession Bob Probert (who actually died DURING the shooting of the movie). THE LAST GLADIATORS is not a bad documentary, but there was a better one to be made out of its footage.
Bob Probert: the best there is. The best there was. The best there ever will be.
I mean no disrespect to Chris Nilan by saying that. I don't think he's the problem with THE LAST GLADIATORS. If he had been the only subject of the documentary, it would've made more sense and judging by the traits of character THE LAST GLADIATORS is highlighting, he would've loved to contribute to the movie like all the other guys. Nilan was a team player, who could do the necessary sacrifices his role demanded out of him. The treatment THE LAST GLADIATORS makes of Chris Nilan is very conventional and I don't think it serves its subject very well. It's a redemption story we've heard over and over again. I'm sure Nilan had more interesting stories about the game (whenever he talks about the game, it's fascinating), but other choices were made and THE LAST GLADIATORS lost some of its unique potential because of it.
THE LAST GLADIATORS was a bit messy and disorganized, and it's trying really hard to wrench emotions out of its viewers. If you decide to shoot a documentary feature about hockey, let it be about the sport. Whatever else you want to talk about is just going to distract from its main purpose. THE LAST GLADIATORS is great whenever it talks about the beautiful, rugged game of hockey, but it loses a lot of its identity whenever it delves into more personal/human stuff because it's not what it's good at. It's worth a viewing though if you've been a hockey fan throughout the 1990s, only to heard Tony Twist say: ''There was a twinge in my dick. I liked it that much.'' Don't expect the world out of it. It'll be frustrating at times, but the hockey material is too good to pass on. If you're just a documentary enthusiast, maybe you want to pass though. It's a messy piece that delves into cliché more often than not and that portrays its subject in a not-so-flattering way.