The spirit of John Candy endures in Cody Lightning. The Cree actor really hits his stride in Smudge the Blades playing a shaggy dog coach one just can’t help but love. Lightning brings the kind of underdog spirit that made Candy Canada’s most endearing export. The comparison probably comes easily since there’s kinship between key roles. Smudge the Blades sees Lightning play a trainwreck hockey coach much like Candy’s flawed mentor with a heart of gold in the bobsled comedy Cool Runnings . Blades , which marks Lightning’s latest effort as a writer/director or, more aptly, multi-hyphenate, is cut from the same cloth as the amiable underdog sports movie.

Lightning stars as Zamboni driver William Lowe, who boldly accepts the task of guiding the Treaty 6 Blades. The fictional all-Indigenous hockey team finds itself in jeopardy when their coach (Ed Helms) exits and the team gets booted from the league. The Blades are in a point of crisis as the league wants nothing to do with them. The corrupt refs barely conceal efforts to throw games. However, William believes in these young players. He recognizes that they can’t reach their potential because nobody has the guts, or willingness, to push them to strive for it.

Practices, messy as they are, snap the players into shape. William struggles to keep up physically, but he matches them in heart and spirit. If only, in part, because he wants to bone a player’s mom (Jana Schmieding).

A strong supporting cast captures the young hockey players as they claim their rightful place on the ice. The team has one lone woman, Jaycee (Paulina Alexis), who might be the toughest Blade. Smudge the Blades mixes familiar underdog movie beats as William leads the team through practices, losses, wins, and downright ass-kickings. But the film also sharpens its blades by taking the story off the ice and observing the dynamics of family and community that come into play. These young athletes have their own troubles and the ice gives them an outlet. William knows this all too well, and his story takes one by surprise.

What’s most impressive about the film, however, is the way in which Lightning comes into his own as a star. His trajectory feels relatable to the players. Nobody seems to know what to do with Indigenous athletes, nor do the powers that be really care. The game’s rigged against them.

For Lightning, who got his start in the 1998 award winner Smoke Signals and then got some small or occasionally notable roles here and there in movies nobody saw, he’s making his mark his own way. Blades offers a confident follow-up to his 2023 directorial debut Hey, Viktor! , a crass, if frequently amusing meta-movie about his struggle to find a career after Smoke Signals . He finds his groove here as a leading man who brings laughs, heart, and an edge to challenge audiences throughout the journey.

While Lightning’s sophomore feature shows a little more room to grow behind the camera, the jump from Hey, Viktor! to Blades shows considerable promise. Smudge the Blades excels whenever Lightning holds the camera’s attention. That confidence, however, doesn’t quite translate to the lens’s focus with the other players. The film’s a little rough around the edges with the rest of the team when it comes to the synergy between the technical elements and the star power, but when Lightning transfers his relationship with the camera to his co-stars, he’s looking at whatever the hockey equivalent of a grand slam is. (I don’t know sports metaphors.)

Smudge the Blades goes to unexpectedly dark places as Lightning reveals the past from which William uses the team as an escape. While the news flips William into a new light, Lightning captures the palpable desperation in the salty coach’s desire to do right by the players. He boldly handles a character who may be repellant one moment and winning the next. But watching Lightning command the coach’s earnest motivational speeches, he finds that Candy-esque everyman spirit. He tells a viewer this guy’s rooted in something real.

Smudge the Blades premiered at TIFF. It screens again Sept. 14.

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