All Hat (2007)

Keith Carradine and Ernie Hudson are great and perfect for their roles . Nice story set in Canadian early Autumn . A laid back movie with a great ending that you will never tire of watching ; especially if you are a horse lover ! Made with mostly Canadian actors including First Nation Graham Greene and Gary Farmer. Luke Kirby is excellent in leading role . Set is in Fort Erie Canada and revolves around Kirby just released from 2 years of prison coming " home" to his fathers friend ( Carradine) a struggling farmer and small time race horse raiser struggling to make ends meet . All about setting things right and the little guy trying to come out ahead by taking down corrupt creeps . I highly recommend watching this movie and have no idea how some gave it a fair rating. Also has great background music and soundtrack .

Ray Dokes (Luke Kirby) leaves prison to find most farms back home have been bought up by old nemesis bully land developer Sonny Stanton (Noam Jenkins). He starts working for poor old friend Pete Culpepper (Keith Carradine) on his horse farm. Ray's former love Etta Parr (Lisa Ray) refuses to sell to Sonny. Chrissie Nugent (Rachael Leigh Cook) is Pete's wild drunken jockey. Sonny is in gambling debts and has a thoroughbred stolen.The film looks flat. Luke Kirby doesn't have big screen charisma. Nobody comes off looking good and I put most of it on director Leonard Farlinger. The performances are tired and weary. There is no energy. The movie has some great actors but they are either secondary or they struggle in the haze. The character Ray isn't good to root for either. He's screwing Chrissie right away but we're suppose to root for his star-crossed love for Etta. There are also a few too many side stories to the movie. The story has some potential but it's not realized here.

I don't know what to say about this movie. The first hour and ten minutes were REALLY slow and boring. Twenty minutes in I kept asking myself, "am I going to watch this thing?"Then right at the 1:10 marker when Pauly said to Dean "don't ask questions Dean" it turned around, and became a good warm hearted comedy. From there on, it was pretty good. If the whole movie was like that I'd rate it way higher. But watching a snooze fest for an hour and ten minutes isn't redeemed by 15 minutes of a good ending.So, in the end, it wasn't even average, it was boring, then pretty good. I think a rating of 5 stars is generous.

A classic tale of the little people vs the big 'uns. It is set in a community that could be anywhere in rural North America under threat of suburbanization, but happens to be Ontario. This could matter from a box office point of view since it is sufficiently recognizable to Americans as to not need to be seen as a Canadian film.The soulful, moody score from guitarist Bill Frisell helps carry the film forward as the down-on-their luck band of battlers try to fight the rising tide as represented by the billionaire's dastardly son. Sonny Stanton is played so interestingly by Noam Jenkins that you end of sort of liking him anyway. My favorite scene focuses on him getting into deeper trouble losing tons of money at the track.Lisa Ray and Rachael Leigh Cook fight for most delicious horse country babe. Ernie Hudson, Keith Carradine, David Alpay, and Joel Keller, among others, give character performances that provide a fun weft to the scheming warp of counter-scam mastermind played by an understated-but-credible Luke Kirby.Proof that Canadian film can be fun, I greatly enjoyed this film!