juneebuggy A nice feel-good family film along the lines of Seabiscuit but without any of the drama. The cast is fantastic and a great setting in the late 1960's. I just keep wanting to say nice, I mean nothing awful happens to anyone here except for a tooth abscess and a bit of sexism but I still found it interesting. Tracing the origins of the "greatest race horse too ever live" from inception through his triple crown win.There's actually not much attention paid to "Big Red" it mostly follows his owner 'Penny' (played brilliantly by Diane lane) a housewife who inherits her ailing fathers stables and her struggles in a male dominated sport, juggling a career and family.The attention to the issues of the time is well done. I can't find any faults, a definite feel good movie the whole family can enjoy. 03/09/14

oyoyvey ... all of the tax-incentive "LLC Chicanery and Tax Subsidy Shenanigans" that went on behind the scenes in the production of this film! Both Louisiana and Kentucky dropped their trousers & bent over in tax breaks to get the LLC Shell corporation known as "Fast Track Productions" (incorporated in Louisiana by a bunch of Disney execs) to ship in a bunch of film student, college-age kids to assist the handful of journeymen production professionals in the making of this mediocre-at-best effort.If you want to see the financial "pedigree" of this film, all you have to do is visit the Kentucky Secretary of State's website, and start searching, under "Business Records," for:Fast Track Productions, Inc. (#0740398), and Hat Trick Catering (#0735719)Pay special attention to all of the geographical hop-scotching associated with the background of these two "Kentucky/Louisiana companies."The new way of making a film is to descend on a state offering huge tax breaks to have it produced there --i.e., states with struggling economies. But part of the giveback is for the "production company" to agree to use as many "local, state-based businesses" in return. In the case of both of these Kentucky-based "businesses," they remained "in business" just long enough to produce Secretariat -- and then they left.This is how film making is done now ... replete with cheesy tax-subsidy deals, sleazy shell LLC incorporation, and outsourced student labor -- which may explain the inherent lack of production-value quality that we see in so many productions today -- including Secretariat.Always remember: This is not the Disney of Walt or Roy ... this is post-Eisner Disney at work here.Secretariat was a barely-OK film that has a production background screaming for a Michael Moore documentary treatment. Now, that would be a film worth going to see!

sol1218 True story of who's considered to be the greatest racehorse of all time the big Red chestnut himself Secretariat. It was when owner of the near bankrupt Medaow Stables in Virginia housewife Penny Chenery, Diane Lane, decided to get trainer Lucien Laurin, Jon Makovich, and jockey Ron Turcotte, Otto Thornarth, both French Canadians to take control of her two year old Secretariat things started happening.Lauren & Turcotte had guided Penny's other horse Riva Ridge to both the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes the year before only losing to Bee-Bee-Bee in the Preakness on an off track at Pimlico. That prevented Riva Ridge from winning the coveted racing Triple Crown. Now with Secretariat, the two year old champ and 1972 horse of the year, ready to start his three year old racing season it's Penny's hope that he'll do what the great Riva Ridge didn't! Become the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years since Citation did it back in 1948!Easily winning the seven furlong Bayshore Stakes and Gotham Mile at the Aqueduct Race Track the Big Red machine, as Secretariat has become known among racing fans, faltered in the one mile and a furlong Wood Memorial coming in third behind his stablemate Angle Light and California invader Sham. With the Kentucky Derby just two weeks away it was now rumored that Big Red doesn't have the stamina to win the 1 1/4 mile long race as well as the even longer 1 1/2 mile "Race or Test of Champions" the Belmont Stakes. With Sham his main rival in both the Derby and Preakness the Big Red Machine made short work of the Californian not only beating him but setting track, 1.59 2/5 at Churchill Downs and 1.53 3/5 at Pimlico, records in doing it! With Secretariat oddly the odd on choice to do the impossible in winning the Belmont Stakes Sham's trainer Pocho Martin, Nestor Serrano, instructs Sham's jockey Laffit Pincay, Keith Austin, to go head to head with the big chestnut instead of trying to close on him like he did in both the Derby and Preakness where he ran out of gas before he got to the finish line. This set up one of the greatest moments, or two minutes and 24 seconds, in all of horse racing history. In what looked like a match race Sham pushed Secretariat for six furlongs in the hope that the big red horse would burn himself out in doing so. The exact opposite happened with Sham out of breath and stopping badly and finishing up the track dead last! As a tireless Secretariat, with wings on his hoofs, ends up not only winning the race and Triple Crown but winning it by an astounding 31 lengths! That's a distance of some 82 yards almost the length of an entire football field! And him doing it, with the Gospel song "O' Happy Day" in the background, without as much as breaking a sweat!Great heart thumping and colorful racing scenes even though they weren't filmed, Aqucduct Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, where the actual races took place. As for the Preakness Stakes it was shown on a TV screen with the actual 1973 video of the race that Secretariat won. Which only goes to show that the movie like the great horse that it depicted Secretariat, who won 16 out of 21 races in his career, wasn't as perfect as we would have liked it to be!

writers_reign This is the kind of film where expectation triumphs over knowledge. No serious theatre buff goes to see Othello or Julius Caesar and is devastated when Desdemona gets it where the chicken got the axe or Caesar's buddies plunge their daggers where they'll do the most good. We KNOW how it ends but we HOPE that a new production will still entertain us. So it is here, even non-sports fans have probably heard the name Secretariat and are vaguely aware he established some kind of record in horse-racing circles and that, coupled with the name Disney, is sufficient to get us to the box office. We are not - or should not be - disappointed. This is an uplifting tale involving a woman and a horse and it's all true - well, maybe ninety per cent true. It's full of Disney values, well acted by Diane Lane, John Malkovich and Margo Martingale and if it doesn't quite eclipse the other movies by the same thirty-one lengths by which Secretariat blew his rivals away in the Belmont Stakes - the third leg of the 'Triple Crown', we are still left with a feel-good movie for all the family.