The Boys

Every Monday evening eleven men gather at the rink and pull on the jersey of a team playing in an amateur league. One is a lawyer, one a policeman, one a mechanic, one out of work; the moment they walk into the dressing room they all leave their age, their job and their troubles at the door. Their coach Stan says these men have a puck tattooed on their hearts. Then a debt from outside the club turns the game into something other than fun. Louis Saia's film was an event in Quebec: it broke the region's box office record on release, took close to seven million dollars, and became the highest-grossing domestic film in Canadian cinema. Three sequels followed, and each of them won the award given to the year's biggest box office earner in Canada. What it is about is simple: male friendship can only be assembled around a pretext, and here the pretext is hockey.