Secretariat (Monday, October 11, 2010) (135)

Secretariat is based on the biography of the great horse by Bill Nack that he wrote in 1975. It is important to note that the official billing says the film is "suggested by" Nack's book, which is an important distinction because it really plays fast and loose with history. I guess one reason for this is that the film is really a story about Penny Tweedy, the main owner of the horse, and some details were added to make her more of an interesting character.


In 1969, Penny Tweedy (Diane Lane) is a Denver housewife with four kids and a loving husband. She's busy doing typical housewifey tings when she gets a call that her mother has just died and her father is now suffering from dementia. She flied back to Virginia to her family's horse farm that her father has turned into a successful business. While there, she is told that due to the estate taxes involved after a death, the family would be better off selling the farm and all the horses.


Penny seems to be a very smart lady with a nose for horses and she resists her brother's and husband's pleas to sell, instead deciding to fire the horse trainer who has been stealing from them and hire Lucian Laurin (John Malkovich) a trainer with a good reputation. Lucian quickly begins to train the farm's newest foal a big red horse that will ultimately be called Secretariat.


Secretariat is a tremendous horse from the get-go. He has a tremendous lineage a huge size. He begins racing as a 2-year-old in 1972 and wins a ton of races and ultimately is named Horse of the Year, an unusual achievement for a horse of his age. Just as this happens, Penny's father dies, bringing back the calls for the sale of the horse to pay for the taxes. They might be able to get as much as $7million for him - a record price. Penny doesn't want to sell him and instead sells shares in him, but retains control. She then has to hold her breath during the Triple-Crown season of 1973 to see if her decision was wise or not.


There are a ton if things wrong with the story, it's hard to know where to start. For one thing, Penny Tweedy was actually involved in her father's farm for awhile before she is in the film, and even owned Riva Ridge, the horse that won the Derby and Belmont in 1972 (the year before Secretariat won those). The really interesting story (as it is beautifully told in the book) is that Penny loved Riva Ridge more than Secretariat and rather resented that the red horse took attention away from her favorite. I guess this story was cut out for efficiency, but I think it could have been rolled in somewhere - especially if the film is really about her and not the horse.


The film is made by Disney and has a very saccharine, boring feeling about it throughout. Diane Lane does a good job with the role, but it is so shallow there's not much for her to work with. Director Randall Wallace does a very bad job here and misses at least two of the most exciting parts of Secretariat's story almost completely. The scene when they are selling shares in the horse is told in the book in a wonderfully dramatic and cinematic way (when reading it, I thought about how it would be turned into a scene in a film). Here, the scene falls flat and never really raises any excitement or interest at all.


One thing I'm really upset about it the treatment of the Preakness. Secretariat's most famous win is certainly the Belmont, which he won by 31 lengths, but possibly his most dramatic was the Preakness where he started out from behind (as he did in nearly all of his races) and then made his move to the front of the pack on the first turn. This is really never done in horse racing because it requires the horse to take a wider line around the bend, effectively running a longer race than the others. That Secretariat did that in this race was for many the most impressive feat. In this film, we see the race on the television in the Tweedy house and can barely see the move on the grainy TV screen. What a shame!


I would not recommend this film at all, but would strongly recommend Nack's book, Secretariat: The Making of a Champion. I think that is a much more interesting and exciting telling of the story than this very polished and trite film.


Stars: 1.5 of 4