Nestor Serrano | Through the Shattered Lens

I’ll admit that I’m not a huge fan of horse racing, although I will periodically go to the Oaklawn Racetrack in Hot Springs, AR, and watch them run. I did enjoy the horse racing movie SEABISCUIT (2003) when I saw it a decade or so ago, and I always enjoy driving past the beautiful horse farms in Lexington, KY, when I’m on my way to see my wife’s family in West Virginia. This weekend was the Kentucky Derby, and I saw a stat that every horse running is a descendant of the 1973 triple-crown winner, Secretariat. I thought that was pretty cool stuff. I told my wife about it, so we decided to watch the movie SECRETARIAT (2010) this morning.

The film centers on Penny Chenery Tweedy (Diane Lane), a Boulder, CO housewife who takes over the management of her dad’s horse stables in Virginia when his health gets so bad that he can no longer handle it himself. The business is facing a lot of financial problems, and her husband just wants her to sell everything and come on back home. But Penny doesn’t want to sell, especially when the stable acquires a young colt that just may have to the right combination of speed and stamina to become a great racehorse. Wanting to see her horse get a chance to run, she hires eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich) and the aggressive jockey Ron Turcotte (Otto Thorwarth) in order to give “Secretariat” a chance to reach his potential. And boy does he ever, ultimately becoming the first “Triple Crown” winner in 25 years.

I’ll go ahead and say that I pretty much got exactly what I was expecting with SECRETARIAT. It’s a “feel-good” movie that made me happy at the end. Outside of him being a triple crown winner, I didn’t know much about Secretariat’s story, so it was fun just seeing how dominant he truly was during his legendary run in 1973. And the performances from the leads are very good. Diane Lane is beautiful and convincing as the housewife determined to give every thing she has to make Secretariat a winner. John Malkovich’s eccentric horse trainer is the kind of role he excels in, and he’s both funny and emotionally engaging. I liked Otto Thorwarth and Nelson Ellis as Secretariat’s jockey and groomer, respectively. Each of them had their individual moments to shine. I also wanted to mention how impressive the camerawork is during the racing sequences. For a film like this to be exciting, the races have to be exciting and director Randall Wallace and cinematographer Dean Semler deliver in spades. If I had any complaint about the film, it would probably be the oversimplification of some of the supporting characters. For a film based on a true story, it was odd to see the owner of Secretariat’s primary competition reduced to almost a comic book villain in his behavior. That aside, I enjoyed the film and I’m glad I watched it.

I’ve include the trailer for SECRETARIAT below:

Act of Valor is a film that I’ve been following for quite a bit now. For those who haven’t already heard about this film the premise is quite simple. It’s a film about a team of Navy SEALs who undergo a mission to stop a terrorist plot against the U.S. It’s a plot that has been done countless of time and not just with Navy SEALs as the protagonists. But with the Navy’s elite special-operations team having been involved in several well-documented events this past year (mainly the operation to find Osama bin Laden and his subsequent killing) they’ve become the go-to special-ops team Hollywood has latched onto.

What separates Act of Valor from other war action-thrillers of the past, present and future is the nature of it’s cast. While the film does have professional actors such as Roselyn Sanchez, Emilio Rivera and Nestor Serrano the ones who make up the SEAL team in the film are actual active duty members of the Navy SEALs. The film also uses actual SEAL team missions which the writer, Kurt Johnstad, had been given access to in order to create the screenplay for the film.

The trailer makes mention that the SEAL team members are real SEALs and they’re also using up-to-date tactics and equipment which every action filmmaker from Kathryn Bigelow to Michael Bay must be drooling to get their hands on. There is one question that will pop up as more and more people are exposed to this film leading up to it’s release.

Will the active duty SEALs be up to the task of actually emoting for the camera when not conducting the very operations in the film they’ve trained for years to perfect?

I guess we will have to wait until the film’s release date on February 17, 2012 to find the answer to that question.