I’m biased. I have a passion for horse racing and it got indulged in the marvelous new film, Secretariat. It’s not as good as Seabiscuit but it’s a great two hours.
Secretariat (Diane Lane, John Malkovich, James Cromwell, Scott Glenn) — Even more than movies, my passion is horse racing. There has never been a more talented horse in my lifetime than Secretariat, who won the Triple Crown of horse racing (The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes) for the first time in 25 years in 1973. Horse racing was still the most attended spectator sport in the 1970s, which brought three Triple Crown winners. There have been none since.
The unexpected box office success of Seabiscuit made Secretariat, the movie, possible. In between these two, another G-rated horse racing movie, Dreamer (with Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning and Elisabeth Shue), was also a surprise hit. And while horse racing is facing its most trying times today, these movies still either stimulate the imagination or remind us of a simpler time where we could tell the winners from the losers and where sports seemed like a shared human experience.
Secretariat is a heartwarming story of the horse and its owner, Penny Chenery (Tweedy). For those of us old enough to remember Secretariat and the Triple Crown run, Ms. Chenery was the center of attention for those five weeks over which the three races are run. She seemed stately, classy, independent and confident. In Diane Lane, Director Randall Wallace picked the perfect actress. Lane plays Chenery with all of the traits previously mentioned but also as a risk-taking and loving daughter and mother who lived her childhood dreams through “Big Red,” the nickname picked for Secretariat as a foal. As good as Lane is, she is surpassed by the stunning performance of John Malkovich, who plays the horse’s enigmatic trainer Lucian Laurin. Horse racing fans remember Laurin’s unique fashion statements, most notably his colorful, generally ugly, hats. But Malkovich breathes personality into Laurin, who came out of retirement to train Secretariat. Real-life jockey Otto Thorwarth plays legendary rider Ronny Turcotte, the fearless pilot of Secretariat. He isn’t the “natural” that Gary Stevens was in Seabiscuit but he is believable as Turcotte.
This Disney film struggles a bit to create tension since little really existed. Sure, Chenery had difficulty raising the money to keep her father’s farm afloat. But that story falls a bit flat as the horse wins all of the major two-year-old races, having been named horse of the year. So they decided to demonize horse breeder and owner Ogden Phipps (played by James Cromwell) as well as Pancho Martin, trainer of Sham, the horse that finished second to Secretariat in the first two Triple Crown races and last in the Belmont Stakes. Both Phipps and Martin (who is played by one of the best bad guy actors, Nestor Serrano), would have demanded equal time if they were still alive.
Even though we know the story, there are some revelations in the film – how Secretariat was named by Chenery’s father’s longtime secretary; the role legendary breeder Bull Hancock, owner of Claiborne Farms, played in helping out the Chenerys; and how close Secretariat’s connections came to scratching him out of the Kentucky Derby.
For the purists and knowledgeable fans among us, there are several inaccuracies, continuity errors, and omissions in the movie. I certainly wished they had used some actual footage of the races either in the film or over the credits (they did show the actual photos of the principals). The same holds for the real race call used on the Belmont Stakes. But casual viewers won’t notice and won’t care.
The film is very entertaining; the acting is impeccable; the photography is colorful; and the race scenes appear more believable than in Seabiscuit. I expect to see Malkovich nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. And there is some chance that Lane could get nominated, too. With a PG rating for mild language (none of which I remember), this is a film for adults and kids that will leave you feeling good and, perhaps, with a tear in your eye.