HorseApples

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2005)

Well, I bought the DVD after viewing it about 3 times from the library, so I must like it.
Horseapples to people who don't like it. Or ask for it to be less predictable. The original story is amazingly corny -- you'd never want to hire God as a script-writer, because he/she/it has got a very predictable sense of plot. And the parents never did come back. Asking for "unpredictability" in this story is like asking that the Titanic makes it to New York.
Had a lot of fun watching one of the 20 horses that played SeaBisquit perform the actions that the actors had discussed. In the final scene, Bisquit #19 or 17 or whatever, filmed in slow motion, visibly and clearly changes leads. It's easy for a horse to do -- it's exactly like the little hop a soldier, having gotten out of step on parade, performs to get back into step. But it may not always be so easy to film.
Chris Cooper's "Turn him loose!" is a nod to the same cry from his character in "Time to Kill." Cooper's great. My three fav actors are Chris Cooper, Chris Walken and Geoffrey Rush. We will, of course, never see them in the same scene together, because that would be -- ahem, considering so many of Walken's roles -- overkill.
The movie shamelessly uses music, cuts and timing to get your heart-rate up. So? It's a lot more entertaining than the usual snore that goes into an action film. It's about massive rhino relatives pelting down a track at 35 miles an hour -- and the tiny fragile monkeys who should not even be daring to be on top of them, let alone controlling them with a couple of little leather strings. No one can display how dangerous this is -- although SB makes a good try. In no other movie will you see a horse displayed as powerfully and unintentionally deadly as it can be -- rearing to dinosaur height, slamming down like a pile driver, screaming like Godzilla, and, merely by running like a scared cat, carom-ming a mere little human off a wall like a hair-ribbon. My back is the way it is because of a horse-roll. Edited or not, I watch that scene through my fingers.
(I once baby-sat a 17-hand horse. Believe me, War Admiral, at 18 hands, is indeed a Monster.) It's about the horses. Shamelessly. Everybody else should be getting second billing.
This movie never fails to be watchable.
Which is why I bought the DVD.