C | A failing horse farm rests its financial future on a promising racehorse. Directed by Randall Wallace Starring Diane Lane, John Malkovich, and John Walsh Review by Jon Kissel |
Malcolm Gladwell broke down the David and Goliath story in such a way that completely undermined its common understanding. A shepherd wielding a sling in that time period may as well have been armed with a sniper rifle. For a job that requires pegging wolves on the move, a slow-moving big’un would’ve made for an easy target. Underdog arcs are so powerful that they get grafted onto stories that don’t deserve them, like in Randall Wallace’s Secretariat. A dominant racehorse can’t just stomp the competition and strut to the Triple Crown winner’s circle, so the film endeavors to make Secretariat the only thing standing between the bankruptcy of a horse farm for his upper class owners who were otherwise never given a chance. Wallace follows up Secretariat with Heaven Is For Real, a piece of claptrap about a kid who had a dream about a rainbow horse and got a book deal out of it, and it’s probably the more believable of the two.
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