Secretariat (2010)

Housewife Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) has to take over her family's Meadow Stables from her sick father after her mother's death. She's the quintessential underdog in the world of horse breeding. With the help of trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), she produces the most important horse in recent history ultimately the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.There are some questions about the truth in this movie. Although I have sympathies for the complaint, modern audiences have to set aside their naivety. Unless the movie is labeled a documentary, there isn't any good complaining about authenticity.This is a very good traditional underdog movie. Of course, everything is against them. I'm sure Disney has smooth out all the rough edges. I'm sure they just plain thrown out the rough edges. Diane Lane is great as the smart gutsy heroine. All the basics of David versus Goliath are properly included. There is nothing unsuspected to derail this.

I don't care all that much for horse racing. Truth be told I find it completely boring and have no interest in it at all. I do, however, remember watching one horse race. I was 9 years old at the time. My family weren't much into horse racing, either, but there had been so much publicity about this particular race that they decided to watch it, so I had to watch it with them. It was June 9, 1973 - the Belmont Stakes, the race that Secretariat won by 31 lengths to win the Triple Crown. If I've ever watched any other horse race, I don't remember it. But I do remember watching that one and being caught up in the Secretariat legend, so although I missed it in the theatre, eventually I had to watch this movie.Yes. It's made by Disney, so for the most part it's extremely family friendly. Does it have a bit of a fantasy element about it? Yes, especially as regards Penney Tweedy (Secretariat's owner, played by Diane Lane.) She wasn't quite the outsider or underdog the movie portrays her as. She had won two of the three Triple Crown races the year before with a horse called Riva Ridge, and Secretariat himself had, after all, been named horse of the year as a 2 year old. There was a lot of emphasis (really right up to the portrayal of the Triple Crown races) on Tweedy's family, about whom I didn't really care all that much to be honest. Why would I care that she had a hippie daughter? Why did it matter? The story around her father and the hiring of Lucien Laurin (John Malkovitch) was also a piece of Disney fantasy. Laurin was already working for the Chenery family, and had trained Riva Ridge for them.So there are some historical problems with the movie, as there usually are. Real life is apparently never good enough for Hollywood - Disney or not. The movie overcomes those historical issues, though, with an absolutely superb portrayal of Secretariat's performances in the 1973 Triple Crown. Those races were brilliantly recreated and choreographed. Even though you know that Secretariat is going to win, you're on the edge of your seat watching, especially in the Belmont as Secretariat and Sham go neck and neck until Secretariat finally starts to pull away and leaves the field in his dust. No matter what the problems might have been before the portrayal of the Triple Crown (and there really weren't that many; certainly not enough to make this anything even approaching a bad movie) that portrayal alone is worth watching. (9/10)

True story of who's considered to be the greatest racehorse of all time the big Red chestnut himself Secretariat. It was when owner of the near bankrupt Medaow Stables in Virginia housewife Penny Chenery, Diane Lane, decided to get trainer Lucien Laurin, Jon Makovich, and jockey Ron Turcotte, Otto Thornarth, both French Canadians to take control of her two year old Secretariat things started happening.Lauren & Turcotte had guided Penny's other horse Riva Ridge to both the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes the year before only losing to Bee-Bee-Bee in the Preakness on an off track at Pimlico. That prevented Riva Ridge from winning the coveted racing Triple Crown. Now with Secretariat, the two year old champ and 1972 horse of the year, ready to start his three year old racing season it's Penny's hope that he'll do what the great Riva Ridge didn't! Become the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years since Citation did it back in 1948!Easily winning the seven furlong Bayshore Stakes and Gotham Mile at the Aqueduct Race Track the Big Red machine, as Secretariat has become known among racing fans, faltered in the one mile and a furlong Wood Memorial coming in third behind his stablemate Angle Light and California invader Sham. With the Kentucky Derby just two weeks away it was now rumored that Big Red doesn't have the stamina to win the 1 1/4 mile long race as well as the even longer 1 1/2 mile "Race or Test of Champions" the Belmont Stakes. With Sham his main rival in both the Derby and Preakness the Big Red Machine made short work of the Californian not only beating him but setting track, 1.59 2/5 at Churchill Downs and 1.53 3/5 at Pimlico, records in doing it! With Secretariat oddly the odd on choice to do the impossible in winning the Belmont Stakes Sham's trainer Pocho Martin, Nestor Serrano, instructs Sham's jockey Laffit Pincay, Keith Austin, to go head to head with the big chestnut instead of trying to close on him like he did in both the Derby and Preakness where he ran out of gas before he got to the finish line. This set up one of the greatest moments, or two minutes and 24 seconds, in all of horse racing history. In what looked like a match race Sham pushed Secretariat for six furlongs in the hope that the big red horse would burn himself out in doing so. The exact opposite happened with Sham out of breath and stopping badly and finishing up the track dead last! As a tireless Secretariat, with wings on his hoofs, ends up not only winning the race and Triple Crown but winning it by an astounding 31 lengths! That's a distance of some 82 yards almost the length of an entire football field! And him doing it, with the Gospel song "O' Happy Day" in the background, without as much as breaking a sweat!Great heart thumping and colorful racing scenes even though they weren't filmed, Aqucduct Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, where the actual races took place. As for the Preakness Stakes it was shown on a TV screen with the actual 1973 video of the race that Secretariat won. Which only goes to show that the movie like the great horse that it depicted Secretariat, who won 16 out of 21 races in his career, wasn't as perfect as we would have liked it to be!

This is the kind of film where expectation triumphs over knowledge. No serious theatre buff goes to see Othello or Julius Caesar and is devastated when Desdemona gets it where the chicken got the axe or Caesar's buddies plunge their daggers where they'll do the most good. We KNOW how it ends but we HOPE that a new production will still entertain us. So it is here, even non-sports fans have probably heard the name Secretariat and are vaguely aware he established some kind of record in horse-racing circles and that, coupled with the name Disney, is sufficient to get us to the box office. We are not - or should not be - disappointed. This is an uplifting tale involving a woman and a horse and it's all true - well, maybe ninety per cent true. It's full of Disney values, well acted by Diane Lane, John Malkovich and Margo Martingale and if it doesn't quite eclipse the other movies by the same thirty-one lengths by which Secretariat blew his rivals away in the Belmont Stakes - the third leg of the 'Triple Crown', we are still left with a feel-good movie for all the family.