Secretariat (2010)
Directed by Randall Wallace
Housewife and mother Penny Chenery agrees to take over her ailing father's Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge. Against all odds, Chenery - with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin - manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.
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What critics compared Secretariat to
Neither Rich nor director Randall Wallace, who has been best known to me for writing Braveheart 15 years ago, give any apparent shit about depicting actual, legitimate drama, and at times the film earnestly shies away from it - for the first hour, the story keeps promising to explore the toll that Penny's obsession with horse-farming takes on her family, half a country away, but it never comes close: a combination of artistic indifference, and a scattershot narrative structure that blazes through the first three years of its story without any attention paid to chronological markers.
Unfortunately, Wallace, who had previously penned Mel Gibson’s 1995 Oscar-winning, global hit “Braveheart,” believes in spelling out every dramatic conflict and every resolution.
The film, directed by Randall Wallace, screenwriter of “Braveheart” and “Pearl Harbor,” and scripted by Mike Rich (“Finding Forrester’), boasts the triple crown of Diane Lane in a great lead role, Margo Martindale in support and an inspiring thoroughbred.
Director Randall Wallace knows how to make an audience cheer (he wrote "Braveheart" and wrote and directed "We Were Soldiers").
That’s not to say that Wallace (writer of Braveheart and director of We Were Soldiers) doesn’t take some significant liberties with the story, or that he doesn’t make some lousy choices.
Maybe the earlier film about a smallish horse had a bigger heart and better writing than Randall Wallace’s third directorial outing—after “The Man in the Iron Mask” (1998) and “We Were Soldiers” (2002) —but his film does tell a decent story (heck, he did write “Braveheart” ) and provides some fascinating insight into the 1969 coin-toss circumstances that would deliver an unborn foal that would grow into a champion.
The film, directed by Randall Wallace, screenwriter of “Braveheart” and “Pearl Harbor,” and scripted by Mike Rich (“Finding Forrester’), boasts the triple crown of Diane Lane in a great lead role, Margo Martindale in support and an inspiring thoroughbred.