Goon

Doug Glatt works the door at a bar. He is not clever, he is kind and he hits genuinely hard. After beating up a hockey player during a game he gets noticed and is signed by the minor league Halifax Highlanders as an enforcer, the man who protects his team and fights. He barely learns to stay upright on the ice. A meeting with Ross Rhea, a legendary enforcer at the end of his career, becomes unavoidable. Michael Dowse directed. Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg wrote it. Seann William Scott plays Doug and Liev Schreiber plays Ross Rhea, with Alison Pill, Eugene Levy and Baruchel in the cast. The source is a real life: the book Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey by Adam Frattasio and Doug Smith. Smith approved the adaptation and footage from his own playing days runs over the credits. It was shot in Manitoba, in Brandon, Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg, from an independently financed script. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 81 percent, but the box office stopped at 7 million dollars against a 12 million budget. The film found its audience on Netflix instead and picked up six Canadian Screen Award nominations. A sequel directed by Baruchel followed in 2017. Who it is for: viewers who like sports comedies and crude but tender characters. Who it is not for: anyone who takes the violence question in hockey seriously. The film looks at the enforcer role with affection rather than questioning it.