Worth seeing

Rating: Null/10 (29 March 2004)

Though I enjoyed this film, I have to agree that it doesn't quite make it - it feels a bit too much like a documentary with some rather familiar melodramatic moments thrown in. Having just read the book and watched the movie back-to-back, I especially noticed where they over-simplified the story (I know - it can't be helped when transferring a story from page to screen), where they changed the facts, and where they over-simplified the *message*, too. I know it's nit-picking, but I just want to mention the following points:
1) Red Pollard's parents did NOT in any way abandon him, despite losing their money. *He* was the one who wanted to try to make his way in the world. It was the family friend who was supposed to be looking out for him who abandoned him.
2) Charles Howard's son was 16, not 12, when he died in a car accident going fishing, and *not* because his father pressured him in any way.
3) As I understand it, Red Pollard never told anyone except his wife that he was blind in his right eye, and Charles Howard and Tom Smith both went to their graves without realizing that their former jockey could only see out of one eye.
4)The movie turns Tom Smith into a kind of clichéd "horse whisperer", which was true, but it left out his very marked ornery side - the mind games he was always playing with reporters, the fact that he cared more about horses than people, to the point of not even noticing when one of his underlings was very sick.
5) The movie does not show the extent of Red Pollard's injuries - he had not one but three serious riding accidents before winning the Santa Anita (including the one where he lost his sight). Yes, his leg was shattered, but that was only part of it. He paid for his success with his health, and suffered chronic pain for the rest of his life from the injuries he sustained. Of course, that doesn't play very well in a "You can do anything if only you believe and work hard" kind of movie, but IMO, sometimes the price of achieving a particular dream *is* too high.
6) The movie also mostly leaves out the "class struggle" that Laura Hillenbrand depicts so clearly in her book. One of the reasons Pollard suffered so much was because nobody (especially the horse-owners) cared about the safety or welfare of the jockeys (Howard being an honourable exception). This might have been harder to show on film, but I think it would have made a more complex and more interesting movie.
7) Just my opinion, but I didn't much like the actress who played Marcella Howard. MH seems to have been a unique and interesting person, and this actress seems rather generic to me. Plus, I gather that MH was Mexican or at least Hispanic. I don't know whether she did or not, but I pictured her speaking with a slight Mexican accent.