A Brilliant Conflict

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

In the 60's there were two types of families: Those that had avocado kitchens and those pretentious families that had sunflower yellow kitchens. These were sunflower yellow families whose kids wanted to run away and join Allende's Chile and stole their school project idea from Simon and Garfunkel and pretended to pass it off on their own. The avocado kids were up to their knees in rice patties getting their limbs shot off by Charlie.Since we already know the horse wins the triple crown, the movie attempts to create drama where none exists. John Malkovich plays a trainer whose clothes sometimes appear to be made from discarded table cloths. The husband is stereo-typically non-supportive, until the end. When dad dies the poor family has a 6 million dollar estate tax and only 11 million dollars worth of horses. My heart just bled for poor little rich Penny who wanted to keep her prize horse. Around this point she becomes a Republican, who attends all white parties while the black horse groomer sleeps on hay.While the acting was good, I found the script to be a bit pretentious.

For being a movie about an equestrian icon, I was surprised at how disengaged I felt with the horse. I went into this movie expecting to see an exciting tale about an underdog who rose above the odds to win it all. Instead, I got a bogged-down story that loses itself in flat characters and uninteresting dialogue. The cast is great and everyone does their best to keep the movie afloat, but even John Malkovich can't make up for such a shoddy script. Overall, Secretariat is a movie that tries to do too much. Instead of focusing on the horse and what it means to win, we get stuck with dull interactions about investors, boring family issues, financial decisions, and other aspects that do very little to support the story. A movie titled 'Secretariat' should focus on the horse. You can imagine my frustration when I discovered how little insight the film gave about him. What it showed was a two-hour display of Diane Lane's insecurities and how she deals with an unsupportive husband. A husband who, believe it or not, has no personality aside from being too concerned about money.It's a pretty harmless venture, and it certainly means well, but I can't overlook the blatant issues. It certainly isn't terrible, but if you're looking for an inspiring movie about an American legend, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Stick with Seabiscuit, a movie with far more interesting characters, a much better script, and a lot more heart.

In many ways this movie is like the young Secretariat himself. It comes from a great pedigree (backstory) and has tons of potential but it doesn't quite have the right jockey (direction) to master its power.The direction, acting, and script can be somewhat weak and the movie doesn't seem to understand the story's natural beauty. For some reason, the movie recreates the races play-by-play. In the Belmont race, it includes a famous line, but the recreation doesn't capture the same power as Chic Anderson's original call. In fact, they omit several dramatic and powerful lines, especially in the Belmont race, in favor of a poem-gimmick that is used awkwardly.What the movie does right is it includes a surprising amount of historical detail that really adds to the drama. From Secretariat "throwing his head around" in starting gates to extremely accurate recreations of his most notorious races. And even the dramatized competitive subplot between the Sham team and Secretariat team seems to work to build up tension.In the end, the movie does a good job of bringing several elements of the Secretariat story together into a whole which is especially helpful for people who don't know how the story ends. The details are there, but the director and writer should have taken a character's advice and "just let (the story) run". In the end, they act like the inexperienced jockey who couldn't handle Secretariat. This doesn't make the movie bad (I mean, how could it be? It's such a great story), it just doesn't quite capture the magic to make the movie the champion it should be.** EXTRA ** If you don't mind spoiling the results of the final race for yourself, check out this mix on YouTube of the final race. It mixes real footage and audio with the score from the film. It's brilliant and far more dramatic than the movie version. Just remember, you will see the results of the final race of the movie if you watch this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18ui3Rtjz4)

To begin with this movie was not a movie Disney should have been allowed to make It is a 2 hour lovefest and a truly bad film If the film would have had merit I think the racing scenes would have had real racing footage the announcers would have been real commentators Save the 2 hours and watch Phar Lap Maybe Black Beauty if you are so inclined A bad film about arguably the greatest American racehorse ever Now a film, not by Disney, about the greatest 20th century sire, Northern Dancer, would play much better Bad from beginning to end though Malkovich saved some scenes. Secretariat would have hacked up this vile film. What can I say to save the film....nothing