Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/21/10
It's a cliche, but sports
really are like life in a lot of ways. Individual games, races and
competitions provide plenty of opportunities for small victories, but the
big prizes require so many things to go right and so many better financed
opponents to be outlasted, that for a true underdog to overcome the odds
is not only rare, but really special. And so, while the rank and
file athletic event is traditionally poor subject matter for the movies,
underdog stories are just about perfect. Disney's been cornering
the market on the “inspirational sports movie” for the last 10 years or
so, delivering one of the decade's best movies in the underrated Miracle
and plenty of other solid efforts along the way. What often strikes
me when watching these tales is why somebody didn't run right out and make
them into films the year after they happened, and that's rarely been truer
than with Randall Wallace's first-rate Secretariat. Oh, no
question, he and screenwriter Mike Rich have taken liberties here and there
to up the Underdog Factor in the tale of the last Triple Crown winner and
his determined owner, but there's a moment late in the game that is such
pure cinematic majesty, and that actually did happen, that I can't imagine
how the movie rights to this horse's story gathered dust for most of my
lifetime. Well, no more: Wallace has fashioned a winningly
old-fashioned crowd pleaser that literally had people at my screening on
their feet cheering Secretariat on to victory. And given that he's,
well, Secretariat, that must mean the filmmakers have done more than a
few things right.
As veteran horse breeder
Chris Chenery (Scott Glenn) slips into dementia, his children Penny (Diane
Lane) and Hollis (Dylan Baker) are summoned to the ranch to discuss the
distribution of his assets. Penny, before marrying businessman Jack
Tweedy (Dylan Walsh) and settling down to raise a family, had soaked up
her father's lessons and can't let the family ranch go despite Hollis'
preference to sell it and its assets. She latches onto a deal Chris
made with billionaire Ogden Phipps (James Cromwell) to breed two of their
horses with the winner of a coin flip receiving their choice. Penny
knows which horse she wants, but loses the coin toss: luckily for
her, Phipps picks the other one and she gets the opportunity to raise the
animal they name Big Red. After firing the corrupt trainer who's
been taking advantage of her father, she has to find a new one on short
notice and turns to retired Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), who's more
famous for the big races he's lost than the ones he's won. But Big
Red quickly proves to be a special animal and under the name Secretariat,
begins to win races, feeding Penny's hunger to risk more and more on his
future. When the farm's tax burden becomes overwhelming, she has
only one chance to pay the bills and keep the horse: sell future
breeding rights for an astronomical price contingent on Secretariat winning
horse racing's fabled Triple Crown.
Rallace and Rich don't let
little details like the fact that one of Penny's horses won the Kentucky
Derby and Belmont stakes the year before Secretariat also triumphed in
the Preakness get in the way of a good story, and Secretariat is
an excellent story. Pretty much every character has been underdogged
up at pretty much every turn, so like most “true stories” you see in the
movies, Secretariat works better as an introduction to history than
a recitation of it. But it does stick to the facts where the horse
is concerned, and those are the details that really awe. A phenomenal
physical specimen the likes of which the world hasn't seen since, Secretariat
didn't just win the triple crown, but did so with a screenwriter's grasp
of drama. The 1973 Triple Crown races became more and more of a two-horse
show, with the talented Sham providing Secretariat's only real competition
(only three other horses were even entered in the Belmont), and of course
a trio of two-horse races plays much better in the movies than an ever-shifting
field of a dozen legitimate contenders. Rich does an excellent job
of setting up the strategy of horse racing and making the particulars of
how Laurin and jockey Ronnie Turcotte (an auspicious acting debut by Otto
Thorwarth) handle the races pay off in a big way in the end. In fact,
what happens at the Belmont is so surprising and so cinematically grand
that it manages to almost completely neutralize the movie's biggest theoretical
negative: that if Secretariat doesn't win the triple crown, there'd
be no Secretariat.
Although I think Secretariat
is a far better movie, there are obvious parallels to last year's blockbuster
The Blind Side in the way Penny's family and
the sacrifices they must make for her dream gets a lot more play than they
would if we had a male protagonist. Walsh's Jack Tweedy walks a nice
line between the accepted attitudes of the time and the needs of the story:
we don't care for his lack of interest in Penny's ambitions, but we don't
want to punch him in the face. Her kids are pretty much universally
supportive (a nice change of pace) and are very nicely pitched for the
movie's contention that Penny's example is just as important as the hands-on
parenting she misses out on would be. Carissa Copobianco, AJ Michalka,
Sean Michael Cunningham and Jacob Rhodes all do a fine job of making us
like the Tweedy clan and want them along for the ride rather than feel
like they're holding their mom back as movie families have a way of doing.
Alas, I can't help but feel as though Disney got a little too good a look
at those Blind Side box office receipts, because
a pretty clear decision was made after shooting wrapped to “Christian-up”
the proceedings with some awkwardly imposed narration and gospel music
nobody speaking on-screen ever references. Had they found fitting
scripture and songs, you wouldn't notice, but for the life of me I can't
even figure out what the Bible verse Penny quotes both to open the movie
and then toward the end has to do with anything other than that a horse
is involved. Luckily, the biggest dramatic beats of the Belmont occur
in the middle, because I could practically see Sandra Bullock standing
between me and the finish line as the race concludes, sucking some of the
air out of the finish.
Performances are strong across
the board, with Lane totally convincing both in the character and the time
period and Malkovich a hoot as the temperamental, colorfully dressed trainer.
Glenn looms large over the proceedings with a few well-pitched flashbacks
that show why Penny would be so driven to continue his legacy. Cromwell
and Baker do the disagreeably officious things they both do so well, albeit
this time in characters the movie allows to end up on the right side.
The only real human villain, Nestor Serrano is a delight as Sham's cocky
and increasingly agitated owner. The movie is filled with nice performances
in smaller roles, from Fred Dalton Thompson's helpful fellow breeder to
Kevin Connolly and Eric Lange as two sportswriters who observe the events
from a bemused distance. Any question whether Connolly's character
wrote the book that “suggested” Secretariat's screenplay are, of course,
dispelled when Penny volunteers that he “writes like a poet”.
As you can tell, Secretariat
is filled with little historical inaccuracies, studio impositions and moments
of self-congratulation that will drive cynics mad. But when it comes
to inspirational sports stories, I'm no cynic. I may not have been
one of those people on their feet shouting “Go, Secretariat!” in the theater,
but I could see where they were coming from. You know who you are. |
