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Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) and Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich) cheer for their favorite racer in the under-horse sports drama “Secretariat”. |
If this movie were a horse, it would be shot.
You know, for being lame.
Randall Wallace’s hokey, worshipful horse operetta “Secretariat” comes to the big screen practically devoid of dramatic conflict, an essential ingredient for any successful story.
Wallace’s movie follows the famous horse that won the 1973 Triple Crown, finishing its last race with such blinding speed that officials had to calculate it in Warp Speed. (Secretariat also appeared at the Arlington Race Track soon after the Crown.)
The horse’s owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane, in an uncharacteristically affected, painfully strained performance), is a housewife married to a dull attorney (Dylan Walsh). They have four kids.
When Penny’s mom passes away and her aging dad can no longer handle his Virginia horse farm, Penny takes over with help from Dad’s reliable assistant, Ms. Hamm (consummate character actor Margo Martindale).
A coin toss decides which of two as-yet-unborn racing foals will go to Penny, and to zillionaire racing king Ogden Phipps (James Cromwell). She gets the foal she thinks will be a champion, the one she calls Big Red, and later, Secretariat.
Penny’s Harvard economics professor brother Hollis (Dylan Baker) panics because the farm needs $6 million to pay debts, and he demands she sell the promising horse.
No way.
Penny’s an independent American woman, given to uttering lines like “I will not live the rest of my life in regret!” (Read more…)