CAST: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Walsh, James Cromwell, Kevin Connolly, Nelsan Ellis, Dylan Baker, Margo Martindale, Otto Thorwarth, Fred Thompson; DIRECTOR: Randall Wallace; WRITER: Mike Rich; GENRE: Drama; RUNNING TIME: 123 min.
Technical: 3.5
Moral: 3
R 14 (For viewers aged 14 and up)
Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) refuses to sell the horse farm that her ailing father (Scott Glenn) had built from scratch. Partly because she wants to honor her father’s efforts while trusting her hunches, she decides to keep it despite pressure from her family who need the money badly, and from her husband Jack Tweedy (Dylan Walsh) and her children who she frequently leaves behind in Colorado in order to visit the farm in Virginia. She fires a disloyal farm manager and hires a retired trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), resolved to put the farm back on its feet. To raise funds she decides to sell one of their two best horses. In a ritual familiar to horse breeders, she flips a coin with a millionaire Ogden Phipps (James Cromwell) who gets the horse he wants—which is fortunate for Penny because what she really wants is the other horse, a pregnant mare. Together with her young son and the trainer Lucien, Penny is present when the mare gives birth to a male foal that stands up as soon as he is out of the mare’s womb. The groom, Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis), says he has never seen a horse rise on its legs that soon after birth. In due time they name him “Secretariat”.
Secretariat is the name of a true-to-life race horse whose record, set in 1973—as the first Triple Crown champion in 25 years—still stands today, after 37 years. The movie boasts of a no-nonsense script by Mike Rich which does justice to the book on which the film is based, “Secretariat” by William Nack. If the movie feels authentic, it is because Nack (who was a reporter at Newsday) followed the horse all throughout its life, practically becoming its biographer for 20 years. Also, every actor in the film couldn’t have been more perfectly cast, delivering performances that make no room for frills or unnecessary soap. Lane and Malkovich are at their top form, creating vivid characters able to elicit sympathy from viewers. (Too bad they do not disclose the identity of the horse that played Secretariat; while he is no actor, he definitely gets as much camera time as any human on the scene). Crisp editing and spot-on cinematography work hand in hand to enhance capable direction by Randall Wallace.
Viewers need not be racetrack enthusiasts to stay awake through 116 minutes this movie. Secretariat may be a great race horse’s name but the film is not just about horses or racing. It’s a fascinating story about that mysterious connection between humans and animals. While it is a rich source of information about horse breeding and consequently horse-racing, it focuses on what people do on a daily basis—the farm owners, the trainer, the groom, the jockeys, the breeders—and how their decisions affect their lives.
Here’s a piece of information that points to the invisible in the story: author Nack said that in real life the people around Secretariat (at Meadow Farm in Virginia) believed the horse was blessed. What was it about Secretariat that emboldened Penny Chenery to refuse to sell the farm despite an impending bankruptcy, to choose to keep her untested horse over a purchase offer of $7 million (the exact amount that would have saved the family from a total wipeout), to hold on to Secretariat when its chances at winning seemed slim? Secretariat’s record-setting performances saved Penny’s family from insolvency—it did more, much more. Could the horse really be “blessed”? By the time of its death at the ripe old age of 19 years, Secretariat had sired 600 foals; the autopsy also revealed that Secretariat’s heart was two and a half times the size of the average horse’s heart. CINEMA gives Secretariat a good rating but this in no way encourages viewers to bet at the races or endanger family ties on the strength of a hunch. Let’s just say that some people are either lucky or have a lot of horse sense. –By Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS
