Ex-Red Wing Slava Fetisov at middle of 'Red Army' film

Slava Fetisov doesn't seem at all like he wants to be a film star.

He stares at his phone, apparently texting, and holds up a finger for the unseen interviewer to wait with his question.

The interviewer does wait a bit but then tries to slip in his question. This time, Fetisov holds up his middle finger.

"He would do stuff like that," Gabe Polsky said in a phone interview. "We started off like that, you know, he's tough. A difficult interview."

Polsky, who is also the director, set out to make a documentary about the old Soviet Union's hockey juggernaut. He did, but the excellent "Red Army" is very much the story of Fetisov, who grew up in the Soviet system and finished his career winning two Stanley Cups with the Red Wings.

"Red Army" opens here Friday at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak.

The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Polsky grew up in Chicago and played hockey. He became enamored with the Soviets after watching a tape of them.

He said Fetisov, now a politician, was at first a reluctant participant.

"He didn't want to do it, but he agreed to meet with me for 15 minutes," Polsky said. "That interview lasted 5 hours. He opened up, he thought I was prepared and kind of understood the country, the story.

"I didn't know who I was going to get. I didn't know who was going to be the main character. I just started interviewing these guys and the story kind of started to evolve. As I kept working on it, it got more and more focused on Fetisov."

During much of "Red Army," the camera is focused on Fetisov's face as he runs through a gamut of memories and emotions: Smiling as he remembers teammates, sneering as he remembers coach Viktor Tikhonov, smirking as he remembers rolling over Canadian teams, tearing up as he remembers the death of a younger brother.

Polsky also interviewed Fetisov's Soviet teammates, a former KGB agent, journalists and even Scotty Bowman.

Two men who wouldn't participate included Tikhonov — who no doubt knew how he'd come off in the film — and Igor Larionov, Fetisov's teammate in Russia and Hockeytown.

"I tried to get him in the film, and he just was not responsive," Polsky said of Larionov. "I still don't really understand why, but he didn't respond to my many requests. ...

"I'll tell you what, he saw the movie and thought it was really well done. I think he might have thought twice that he didn't do this film."

Fetisov was first selected for the national program when he was 10, and he grew up to be perhaps the world's best defenseman. It gave him a life of hardship but also joy and pride.

He has fond memories of coach Anatoli Tarasov, considered the father of Soviet hockey.

"He developed my patriotism," Fetisov says in the film. "For me it was very important. I belong to a great country. If you wear the national team uniform, it's your duty to do the best."

Tarasov saw hockey as a game of chess. Tikhonov, who died in November, saw his players as mere pawns and made their life miserable.

"Did I respect him as my coach? Yes," Fetisov said. "As a person, no."

But Fetisov also remembers that time with pride and joy, when he played on the Russian Five unit with Larionov, Alexei Kasatonov, Sergei Makarov and Vladimir Krutov.

"I never had more fun than playing together with those ... guys," Fetisov said.

That was a key element of the Soviet style, keeping five-man units together.

"Those players will go down as the greatest five-man unit of all time," Bowman said.

They won a lot of games, a lot of championships, for the Soviets, but in the early '80s, Fetisov and other players wanted the chance to play in the NHL.

It was a lengthy cat-and-mouse game before he finally was allowed to go, the stubborn Fetisov battling the government over money despite threats of Siberia. But he would not consider defecting: "I cannot run away from my country."

His chance finally came in 1989 with the New Jersey Devils. But it wasn't exactly what he was hoping for.

"Nobody like me in the U.S.," he said. "They think in clichés. I'm a bad guy, a Communist."

Fetisov didn't care for the uninspired style of play, either, which was nothing like the intricate passing of the Soviets.

The Red Wings, of course, were the salvation for his NHL career when they acquired him in the 1994-95 season, and the new Russian Five was born, with Fetisov, Larionov, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov.

"Together again on the same team, it was like a fish back in water," Fetisov said.

They were Bowman's secret weapon as the Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1997.

"I didn't really get to learn the system as much as I wanted," Bowman said. "I just let them do what they wanted."

Konstantinov was injured in a limo accident after the season, and Fetisov stayed for one more Cup and parade in '98 before retiring.

"It's American dream, you know," Fetisov said.

Now he is living another dream as "Red Army" has played to good reviews. And he and Polsky took it to the Cannes Film Festival.

"He said that was like a highlight of his life," Polsky said. "He said it was like a waking dream. It's so unusual for a hockey player, especially from the Soviet Union, to be on the Cannes red carpet in front of the world press.

"He really appreciated that, big-time."

Contact Steve Schrader: sschrader@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @schradz.