The Impossible True Story
2010-08-20
$35.0M
123 min
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.
Quite decent story telling. Not too big pretensions and nice performance from a well chosen cast.
The story is quite stereotypical but it is well done.
I thoroughly enjoyed the performances of Diane Lane and John Malkovich, the film itself may not match those two but it still makes for a pleasant time.
This is another sports drama from Disney and another film about horses, of which they have been a fair amount down the decades from the studio. It fails to reach the (very) high levels of 1976's <em>'The Littlest Horse Thieves'</em> and 1991's <em>'Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken'</em>.
However, with that noted, <em>'Secretariat'</em> still produces a fine time. Lane and Malkovich are very good together, Lane particularly stands out. Margo Martindale is involved once more, playing a sweet and lovely character as she always does - she's perfect for those roles. Nice to see James Cromwell, also.
The cinematography is solid, as is the pacing of events. It does feel a little light of serious story at times, but that's hard to avoid when you're dealing with something as interesting but repetitive as horse racing. In the end, it's a nice story about Secretariat and Penny Chenery.
