Lively Secretariat Fades at the Finish
For as long as cinema remains a popular art form, inspirational sports stories will always be a cornerstone of the medium. From Pride of the Yankees to Hoosiers, Knute Rockne All American to Hoosiers, National Velvet to Tin Cup, every athletic event you can imagine (Sylvester Stallone even showcased the world of arm wrestling with Over the Top, but the less said about it the better) has been celebrated by Hollywood. Big cheers can mean big audience, and as long as the two remain linked it goes without saying this is one genre that won’t be petering out anytime soon.
Diane Lane in Secretariat © Walt Disney Pictures
For the past decade the go-to studio for these sorts of films has been Walt Disney Pictures. The Rookie, Miracle, Remember the Titans, Invincible, Glory Road, the list almost feels like it could go on and on infinitum. The level of quality from a production standpoint has always managed to remain rather consistent, and even if I haven’t enjoyed them all each still has had facets to them I’ve been able to respect even if the pictures themselves may have fallen dramatically and emotionally short.
If The Rookie and Miracle are the cream of the crop, than the studio’s new horse racing melodrama Secretariat sadly belongs at the other end of the genre spectrum along with Remember the Titans. While pieces are unquestionably superb, the finished product is frustratingly disjointed and incomplete, and if not for a spectacularly rousing final race there would be very little here to the positive for me to talk about it.
Based on the stunning true story of the legendary horse that won the Triple Crown back in 1973, Secretariat focuses itself not so much upon the titular animal but instead upon his fiery and steadfast owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane). She’s the one who refuses to sell the animal after her father (Scott Glenn) dies from a stroke and leaves her and her brother Hollis (Dylan Baker) a massive estate tax bill, she’s the one who finds hard-headed trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich) to transform the three-year-old into a champion, she’s the one who stands up to her lawyer husband Jack (Dylan Walsh) refusing to be the stay-at-home housewife he apparently wants her to be. The movie is her story, not the horses, and while the two obviously go hand-in-hand together it’s her rise that director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) and writer Mike Rich (The Nativity Story, Radio) are interested in tracking.
Problem is, her whole journey never comes together in any sort of meaningful way. Dramatically everything moves in fits and starts, scenes existing more because the genre requires them to than because they feel genuine. Penny gets into arguments with Jack and Hollis about the horse, about money, about her father’s estate, but instead of honest conversations that could shed light on things in an emotionally honest way instead all we get are platitudes about winning and giving one’s all.
What’s must frustrating about all of this is that, while I am firmly in Penny’s corner, it isn’t like Jack and Hollis don’t have ground to stand on. The former, in particular, is justifiably worried how his wife’s obsession towards raising a racehorse half a continent away from their Denver home will affect the family, and if the film was serious about engaging in adult conversations than that’s the one it should have dove into with much more tenacity. Instead, Jack comes off like a total jerk, only coming around to his wife’s way of thinking and stating he celebrates her choices when Secretariat starts to win. It’s a false representation of how people relate to one another, and for my part I felt cheated that their relationship wasn’t taken with more concrete sincerity.
As much as the superficial dramatics at the core of the narrative drove me nuts, I felt the polar opposite about the film where it came to the rousing and dynamic racing scenes. Wallace stages these sequences, all of them, not just the Triple Crown, in spectacular fashion. John Wright’s (The Incredible Hulk) editing is crisp and clean, showcasing the events with eye-popping flamboyance, while veteran Dean Semler’s (Dances with Wolves) cinematography gets right into the muck and mire of the racetrack. I felt every thrust of Secretariat’s hooves, had moments where I wanted to wipe away nonexistent mud from my face, and thanks to the crackerjack sound design every thunderous thud echoes home with electrical precision.
Then there is Lane. I’m not going to say this is the actress’ best performance, I’d rank her ones in Unfaithful and Under the Tuscan Sun as richer, more profound, but that doesn’t make her turn as Penny any less wonderful. She has a many moments where I felt like she absolutely disappeared into the character, and even if the script continually kept me unimpressed Lane continuously did the exact opposite.
I just wish I felt better about the actual finished product than I actually do. I loved the racing scenes, thought Nick Glennie-Smith’s (A Sound of Thunder) luscious score augmented every scene beautifully, felt that Lane lived and breathed Penny Chenery like no one else maybe could have. But the movie is just too glossy and superficial, so happy to revival in the genre’s clichés, to succeed in the way it could have. It shorts its audience on the rich and vibrant experience it continually hints at, and for a horse that is rightly regarded as one of the greatest pure athletes who ever lived this is one race Secretariat doesn’t win.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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