#Red Penguins Trailer Delivers Beer-Serving Bears, Stripping Cheerleaders and Hockey Fights

“#Red Penguins Trailer Delivers Beer-Serving Bears, Stripping Cheerleaders and Hockey Fights”

The first trailer for the upcoming documentary Red Penguins has arrived. This is the latest from director Gabe Polsky and it is not your average look at the sport of hockey. Rather, this looks at a unique time in the history of the sport after the end of the Soviet Union. It promises to tell “an incredible true story involving gangsters, strippers, and live bears serving beer on a hockey rink.” Yes, really.

As we can see in the trailer, hockey was on the verge of collapse in Russia at this time. So, the Pittsburgh Penguins stepped in to take an ownership stake in the beloved Red Army team. Bizarrely enough, Michael J. Fox was among those who ended up with a stake in the team as part of the deal. It only gets weirder from there. The scenes inside the ring are utterly chaotic, with more of a bizarre circus sideshow feel, as opposed to a standard hockey game. And Disney even gets involved at one point, just to add to the craziness.

Bears serving beer and lifting weights arguably isn’t even the craziest thing we see in the footage. Fights break out in courtrooms, violence erupts in the streets and the mafia even comes into play. This is, to say the very least of it, not your typical fluffy, feel-good look at the world of sports. Gabe Polsky had this to say about it in a statement.

“It’s a story about Americans going to Russia, trying to adapt and survive in a different culture-behaviors and experiences alien to them. Making matters more complicated, Russia in the ’90s was changing radically by the day. Still, there was a window of hope and optimism between the U.S. and Russia that has since disappeared. I wanted to explore how our two cultures relate to one another and what lies at the core of it.”

Red Penguins takes place shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Pittsburgh Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture that redefined what was possible in the new Russia. Steve Warshaw, an eccentric marketing guru, is sent to Moscow and is tasked with transforming the team into the greatest show in Russia. He attracts some of the {NEwF4VBuyFIrAz||biggest names in Hollywood and advertising along the way. The movie takes the viewer on a bizarre journey highlighting a pivotal moment in U.S.-Russian relations, at a lawless era when oligarchs made their fortunes and multiple murders went unsolved.

The movie premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was met with a great deal of praise, currently boasting an 89 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Red Penguins will be available via digital and On Demand platforms on August 4. Be sure to check out the trailer from the Love Indie Films YouTube channel for yourself.