Overview

• Production year: 2010
• Country: USA
• Cert (UK): U
• Runtime: 123 mins
• Drama / Period
• Directors: Randall Wallace
• Cast: Diane Lane, Dylan Walsh, James Cromwell, John Malkovich, Margo Martindale, Nelsan Ellis, Otto Thorwarth, Scott Glenn
• Summary: In 1973, a fledgling stable-owner guides a precocious stallion to set an unbeaten record while winning the Triple Crown

[from Guardian: Film and Guardian: Review]

The "greatest racehorse of all time" mantle fits easily around the neck of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner. So why not a movie version of this champion's life? Secretariat begins in the late '60s, with some good behind-the-scenes material on how thoroughbreds come to be (there's flavorful atmosphere inside the horsey world, including an account of Secretariat's ownership being decided by a coin flip as part of an old-school agreement). A highly lacquered Diane Lane plays Penny Chenery, the inheritor of her father's stables, who segues from being an all-American mom to running a major horse-racing franchise; reliable character-actor support comes in the form of John Malkovich, as a gaudily outfitted trainer, and Margo Martindale, as Chenery's assistant. Screenwriter Mike Rich and director Randall Wallace must do some heavy lifting to make Lane's privileged millionaire into some sort of underdog--luckily, the hidebound traditions of the male-dominated racing scene provide some sources of outrage. The need to stack the deck even more leads the movie into its more contrived scenes, unfortunately, as though we needed dastardly villains in order to root for Penny and her horse. Meanwhile, attempts to reach for a little Seabiscuit-style social relevance don't come off, and a curious religious undertone might make you wonder whether we're meant to assume that God chose Secretariat over some less-deserving equine. The actual excitement of the races can't be denied, however, and Secretariat's awe-inspiring win at the Belmont Stakes remains a jaw-dropping, still-unequaled display of domination in that event. And maybe in sports. — Robert Horton [Review from Amazon.co.uk]

Story

Disney presents an astonishing true story bursting with hope, heart, and courage. Diane Lane and John Malkovich lead a celebrated cast in this inspirational motion picture from the producers of Miracle, Invincible and The Rookie.

Behind every legend lies an impossible dream. Witness the spectacular journey of an incredible horse named Secretariat and the moving story of his unlikely owner, a housewife who risked everything to make him a champion. Out of the gate with never-before-seen bonus features, Secretariat is hours of pulse-pounding entertainment for the whole family!

Cast & Crew

PENNY CHENERY TWEEDY (Diane Lane)
Penny Chenery Tweedy lives in a nice Denver home with her lawyer husband and four children. But when her mother passes and her father's health takes a turn for the worse, she turns her life – and her family's lives – upside down and takes over the Virginia-based horse farm where she was raised. Meadow Stables, once a thriving and well-respected business, is struggling financially, but Penny refuses to sell and instead decides to bet on a promising colt that isn't even born yet. Armed with an intimate knowledge of horses, the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin and a growing confidence that surfaces at exactly the right time, Penny learns to navigate the male-dominated horse-racing world, ultimately fostering what may be the greatest racehorse of all time.

LUCIEN LAURIN (John Malkovich)
Lucien Laurin is a veteran trainer tapped by Penny Chenery Tweedy to help revive her father's Meadow Stables. Retired and reluctant to take on the task, Lucien resists the offer until he learns of the farm's intriguing soon-to-be-born colt. The French-Canadian is on board in time for the colt's birth and sets out to make him a winner. Lucien's gaudy hats and eye-catching attire showcase his penchant for the unexpected – so it's no surprise when he ventures from the norm with Secretariat's training. The effort proves successful when the superhorse becomes the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

SECRETARIAT (several equine actors)
With Bold Ruler as a father and SomethingRoyal as a mother, this horse's destiny was clear-at least it was to the two people who helped get him there. Born with his signature red coat and three white socks, the horse was known to those who loved him as Big Red, though he competed under the now famous moniker Secretariat. Red enjoys eating – a lot – snuggling up to his owner Penny and getting his picture taken, but most of all, he likes to run – fast. In fact, he was the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown – which consists of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. He won the latter by an extraordinary 31 lengths – just to make sure his doubters believed. Mission accomplished.

Production Notes are available on the Disney Pictures website.

[Source: Disney Pictures]

Film: Secretariat

Americans apparently revere their great racehorses, especially if they carry their weight in socio-political resonance - or its absence. Thus, the $58 million-grossing Secretariat, about the powerful red chestnut with the inordinately huge heart whose bid to win the 1973 US Triple Crown supposedly diverted attention from Watergate and Vietnam, arrived comparatively quickly after Seabiscuit, the 2003 Best Picture Oscar nominee and second film about the undersized knobbly-kneed bay who thrilled Americans during the Great Depression.

Australia, too, celebrated its equine hero of the Depression with 1984's Phar Lap. So where is the movie about Bahram, winner of the British Triple Crown in 1935? And why, for that matter, has there never been a film about Sceptre, winner of four British classics in 1902 and therefore a post-Boer War fillip, or Red Rum, whose three Grand National wins in the 1970s solaced many of us during that decade of strikes, power cuts and riots?

The best the UK film industry has come up with is a 1970 documentary about Lester Piggott's great mount Nijinsky, narrated by Orson Welles, and 1984's melodramatic Champions, starring John Hurt as Bob Champion, who overcame cancer to win the 1981 National on Aldaniti, which crocked horse had glimpsed the knacker's yard before his victory: I'm not convinced that we remember these throughbreds because they helped us survive Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher respectively.

Secretariat is predicated on the sub-feminist theme of a Denver housewife, Penny Tweedy (Diane Lane), who struggles against the reactionary scepticism of her tax-lawyer husband (miffed because CBS commentators called her by her maiden name, Chenery) and Harvard-professor brother, as well as that of the racing establishment, as she sought to fulfil the dream of "Big Red" winning the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

The mother of four, Penny is drawn into the fate of her parents' financially imperilled horse-breeding and racing farm in Virginia when her mother dies because her blind, near-senile father (the ghoulishly made-up Scott Glenn) is no longer capable of running it. Losing a coin toss with the patrician owner (James Cromwell, a far cry from Babe's Farmer Hoggett) of the stallion who bred with Penny's mare, Penny takes the remaining foal of a pair, who happens to be the future Secretariat. Ms Chenery would syndicate his stud services to keep the farm alive (though, in fact, it was another horse, Riva Ridge, who saved the farm in 1971).

The movie, written by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester, The Nativity Story) and helmed by Randall Wallace (writer of Braveheart, director of We Were Soldiers), is good on the racing lore - the coin toss, with Penny desperate to lose, knowing she'll get her foal of choice, has topsy-turvy tension. The races themselves are thrillingly filmed, with in-your-face close-ups of the hooves and blinkers of the horses as they wait at the starting gates, and often spine-tingling, particularly the climactic Belmont; cinematographer Dean Semler, whose past films include Dances With Wolves and the World War One cavalry epic The Lighthorsemen, has an eye not just for horseflesh, but also for darkly lit interiors and evocative human silhouettes.

Lane, deglamorised in matronly suits and dresses, is persuasively unflappable as Penny, though she gets to flash her eyes when firing the malign trainer she inherits; his eccentrically attired, volatile Québécois successor, played by John Malkovich, is a teddy bear in comparison. We don't mind that she partially abandons her brood - including an impressionable daughter who has taken up anti-war protesting - because she's a thoughtful superwoman on the farm, one who has a seemingly telepathic understanding with Secretariat, a natural at handling belligerent opponents in press conferences, and an excited girl at the track. She doesn't break sweat through the entire picture. Even her husband and brother come around.

Sadly, Secretariat is otherwise an unpalatable stew of smug conservatism and feelgood Disneyana. Wallace and Rich are members of Hollywood's Christian Right and they plant their movie with biblical quotes, gospel music - Secretariat's entourage grooves to "Oh Happy Day" as it washes the nag - and the odd religiose image. Deliberately avoiding those political realities of 1973, it presents a bland, bland, bland, bland world, wherein even a savvy dame with a cast-iron perm can save the old family farm with the help of a talismanic brooch, her daddy's horse sense, and the support of the old retainer - the horse's Stepin Fetchit-like black groom (Nelsan Ellis). Except that it's not sexy, Secretariat has a touch of Gone With the Wind about it. How weird that it sounds like a film about the body with which Stalin controlled the Communist Party.

— Graham Fuller (03 December 13, 2010)

[Review from the arts desk]

• "Secretariat: An odds on family winner"; rated 4*
• "A bizarre performance by John Malkovich enlivens the dull tale of a 1970s racehorse"; rated 1*
• "Secretariat is simply Seabiscuit reconfigured for the Tea Party set"; (no rating)
• "The Bottom Line: An engaging sports movie about the greatest racehorse ever and his female owner who literally bets the farm on his supremacy."