Secretariat

Horse racing isn’t exactly the spectator sport of choice for most Duke students. Many of us prefer thestrals and three-pointers to thoroughbreds, but the recent movie Secretariat is well worth the watch. An uplifting story that you’d expect out of Disney, the movie distances itself from its competition by a few furlongs because of its sheer, earnest and unbridled spirit.

Directed by Duke alumnus Randall Wallace, Secretariat follows the intersecting and true tales of the eponymous stallion’s owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich) and handlers as they venture to do the undoable and beat the unbeatable: win the infamous Triple Crown, a feat so difficult that no horse had accomplished it in the 25 years prior to Secretariat and no horse has won it in the past 32. While the horse takes the picture’s reins and propels it toward the finish line, Chenery creates most of the drama as she battles grief and gloom, debt and doubt, sexism and stereotypes.

The action sequences brilliantly capture all the dirty danger of horse racing, putting the viewer smack-dab in the perspective of the jockeys and shaking us as thoroughly as the horses shake their mounts. The main actors, especially Malkovich, carry the movie past the wire, but some of the emotional scenes still disappoint; sometimes they feel poorly scripted, unnatural, forced or heavy-handed. Hitting on so many major issues—sexism, racism and the Vietnam War, to name a few—the movie spreads itself too thin, failing to nail them all on the head.

That being said, the final race still sent shivers down my spine, and that’s saying something since I knew the story ahead of time. Other moviegoers actually applauded as Secretariat raced down the homestretch; I may have even broken every movie reviewer’s number one rule and clapped along with them.