Secretariat
Randall Wallace’s “Secretariat” is like that other real-life underdog racing saga “Seabiscuit” in many ways. That’s not always a bad thing. We are given a vested interest in the success of not just the horse at the center of the story, but also the individuals who shaped that horse into a champion (in this case, one who was the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown).
All of that being said, the screenplay by Mike Rich (“Radio”) is even more by-the-numbers predictable than the one for Gary Ross’s Oscar-nominated horse drama in telling the story of Penny Tweety (Diane Lane), a housewife who gets into the racing business when her mother dies, leaving her mind-addled father (Scott Glenn) alone and his estate in financial distress. Penny picks up the ropes quick, and when a coin toss lands her with a little horse with a lot of potential, it’s all a matter of finding the right trainer and jockey to bring the champion out of the horse she affectionately calls “Big Red.”
Since writing the Oscar-winning “Braveheart,” Wallace’s films (as either writer, director, or writer-director) have been sometimes-perilously hit-and-miss. For every “Braveheart” and “We Were Soldiers” there seems to be a “Pearl Harbor” and “The Man in the Iron Mask” around the corner. It’s upsetting for his fans as well; thankully, he’s good at telling a story, whether it’s historical myth (“Braveheart”) or “inspired by a true story” (like this or “We Were Soldiers”). That’s not to say you’ll be quick to forgive him lapses into cliche or what amounts to emotional blackmail (see a lot of “Pearl Harbor”), but you know you’ll be able to become invested in the narrative, no matter how ham-handed it is from a logic standpoint.
In this film’s case, the cast helps immeasurably. And it starts with Lane as Tweety. Yes, you’ll find yourself questioning Penny’s justifications for leaving her family for weeks and months on end to follow this particular dream, but Lane never makes us doubt the resolve behind the decision or Penny’s love for her family. It’s her loyalty to her family (specifically, her loyalty to the memories she had with her father growing up) that drives her, and Lane is capable of real warmth to go with the character’s shrewd savvy as a businesswoman. Helping along the way is another singular turn by John Malkovich as Secretariat’s trainer Lucian Laurin, who comes out of “retirement” to train the horse, Nelsan Ellis as Eddie Sweat, who has a long history with the family working with horses, and Otto Thorwarth as Ronnie Turcotte, the aggressive jockey who road Secretariat to victory.
If the film failed to resonate with me as completely as “Seabiscuit” did, it’s only because the film itself seemed to be going through the motions of an “underdog sports movie” rather than living and breathing the lives and dilemmas of its subjects. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, just a less-successful one. In the end, you’ll still be cheering for Big Red to make it into the history books, in which case, the film has done at least the bare minimum I would expect it to do. I just wish it’d done more.
