Secretariat (2010)

Studio: Walt Disney Studios
Theatrical Release: October 8, 2010
Home Release Date: January 25, 2011
Director: Randall Wallace
Rated PG

Review by James Klein

Disney has been on a kick with family sports films lately. Miracle (arguably the best of the recent Disney sport films) was about hockey, Invincible was about football, The Rookie was about baseball and now Disney has made the horse racing movie with Secretariat. All of these films also were based on true stories and with Miracle and The Rookie, they left this reviewer emotionally drained with a tear in his eye. Unfortunately, Secretariat left me cold and bored.

The film is based on housewife Penny Chenery Tweedy's inheritance of her family's horse ranch. With a not very supportive husband by her side and her four children, Penny decides to keep her father's ranch and raise the few horses he has left. When one of the horses gives birth to a future race horse, she decides on her own that she wants to race it. Recruiting the right help such as trainer Lucien Lauren, stableman Eddie Sweat and jockey Ronnie Turcotte, she soon turns her horse into one of the fastest racing horses in history.

The biggest problem with the film is the script. I never once routed for Penny and to me, she came across as a bit arrogant. Maybe it was the fact they hired Diane Lane to play her as Lane always seems to play these tough female leads. Why did Penny want to get into horse racing after raising her kids? I get that she wanted to help her father out once her mother died but where did she get this passion for the horses? A few brief flashbacks of her as a child is not going to cut it. I never felt I could identify with Penny or even understand where she was coming from half the time. When she is offered eight million for Secretariat, why on Earth did she turn down the money? I never bought her reasoning or her passion. I never believed in her actions. The entire character just seems so cookie-cutter and phony, which is a bad sign since she is based on a real person.

The script also jumps around at various times. There is a focus on Penny's older liberal daughter whose working on a school play against the Vietnam war. What was the point of this? Never once did we ever see the trainer Lucien (played by a bored looking John Malkovich) actually train! He pops up at the beginning of the races and screams his lines, most of them for comic relief. What made the jockey Ronnie so great? We hear how he is one of the best jockey's and when he is first introduced, he is all broken and bruised but never once do we know why or see how great he is.

Director Randall Wallace has a keen eye for action and his racing scenes are pretty amazing. Lots of tricky camera work, horse POV shots, and what a relief to see a film edited so well when most action films these days are edited so quick and choppy. The racing scenes are well edited and Wallace does a good job when sticking to the action. However, Wallace's choice of song cues at certain moments in the film are almost laughable and don't fit at all on what is happening on-screen. Whose bright idea was it to put gospel music in this movie?

I really tried to like Secretariat as I am myself a huge horse racing fan. One can't help to compare the film to Seabiscuit only because there isn't a whole lot of horse racing films. Even though Seabiscuit was predictable, that film had better acting, directing and the writing had more emotional drama. Secretariat on the other hand,  barely gets out of the gate.