CinemaClock Hay River

This picture has the benefit of being a story about a little horse with a big heart, and for that it comes across the finish line a winner, but only by a nose. Without that element this film would have been a complete write-off as the story adaptation is a complete failure. The writer/director Gary Ross includes to many ideas from the book by the same name and only ends up boring me with details that are not relevant to a film story about a very special horse. I didn't want to see non-relevant details like Henry Ford and his Model T, the invention of the assembly line, the 1929 stock market crash, mass western migration and President Roosevelt's New Deal in a movie about a plucky racehorse. You know the filmmaker doesn't have any story telling ability when he chooses to use a narrator and old photo's to move his story along. That's what you get in this film, narration and photos about the history of America in the first half of the last century. With all this crap thrown in, the filmmaker misses the opportunity to really develop the characters and bring the audience a real theatrical story about the unlikely people bringing an unlikely horse to the top of the horse racing world. Only the race sequences in this picture have any real drama and heart and I guess for most people that will be enough, but it should have been so much more. If this film wins any awards it's only because of the dismal crop of movies its competing against in this very disappointing year for cinema..

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