Fresh
The opening sections of this film play like a greatest-hits clip collection, but when Gibney delves deeper into Nilan's personality, it's a magnetic portrait of a rinkside Raging Bull.
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Overview
In ice hockey, no one is tougher than the "goon". Those players have one mission: to protect the star players at any price. Exploring the violent world of hockey fights, Academy Award winner Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side") looks at the world of the NHL enforcers and specifically the career of Chris "Knuckles" Nilan who helped the Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
91%
Tomatometer
Fresh
Gibney celebrates hockey's fisticuff traditions while also recognizing how such brutality ultimately takes its greatest toll on those who perpetrate it.
Nick Schager, Village Voice
Fresh
Gibney deserves credit for making a hockey film that the uninitiated can watch with interest, and for focusing on an issue even some hockey fans can't make up their minds about.
Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post
Fresh
Pretty or not, the stories of dropped gloves and smashed faces shed some clarity on the game's violence ...
Nicolas Rapold, New York Times
Rotten
At his best, Gibney focuses on his subject and then explodes it outward. But with "The Last Gladiators," he's taken a rare misstep. There is undoubtedly a great story within the bruised history of NHL enforcers. Why, though, did he choose Chris Nilan's?
Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News
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