Based on the true story of underdog horse, Mine
That Bird, it is easy to predict the ending of a film which tells you in the
title how great the odds were against him. I can’t imagine they would ever call
a film 50 to 1 if it were about a
horse that lost the race. At the same time, I hardly think anyone would have
bought a ticket to Seabiscuit or Secretariat if they though the horse
would lose the climactic final race. It isn’t the predictability of 50 to1
which makes it far less successful than previous underdog horse narratives; it
is the large sections of the film in which the horse is absent from the screen.
More than being
about that one amazing horse, 50 to 1
focuses on the men who owned and trained him, beginning with a barroom brawl
meet-cute between the two leads. When horse trainer Chip Woolley (Skeet Ulrich)
helps cowboy Mark Allen (Christian Kane) in an unfair bar fight, he solidifies
a friendship with a man whose success years later allows him to repay the
favor. Despite his awful losing streak, Mark hires Chip to be the trainer of
his new horse, Mine That Bird. They struggle to make this arrangement work,
going through all of the predictable lulls that we know will lead to an
inevitably satisfactory conclusion.
Because we know
where the film is headed, the filmmaker’s main task seems to be making this
journey exciting and compelling. There are opportunities to show how hard work
and/or innovative thinking led to an eventual win, but instead it just comes
off as a fluke. The film’s screenplay focuses far less on the horse and the
training process than it does the politics of the business and a few contrived
relationships within the story.
The worst of
these comes in the form of an unnecessary romantic sub-plot between Chip and a
hired trainer named Alex (Madelyn Deutch). The relationship itself is
distractingly manufactured, forced upon the audience during a lengthy
cross-country road trip that distracts from the main focus of the film, made
worse by amateur acting best suited for the world of bad mockbusters and
straight-to-video family entertainment that Deutch has primarily existed in. It
is a bad sign when the horse jockey playing himself in the movie is a far
better actor than the romantic lead.
The DVD for 50
to 1 includes a making-of featurette and a blooper reel. Extreme fans of horse
racing may find portions of this film engaging for the true story behind it,
but they will be forced to endure the other 2/3 of a film in order to enjoy
moments with a horse actually onscreen.
Entertainment Value:
5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 5.5/10
Historical
Significance: 3/10
Special Features: 3/10
1 comment:
This review was a little too harsh. The movie was not another Seabiscuit! It was a rag tag movie about a rag tag bunch dedicated to horses and all that makes them winners.new Mexico is the backdrop. The state itself gets ni respect like the cowboys in Louisville. The script is not polished, the horse is not polished...it comes across as a b movie only because it's not Hollywood and that makes it all the more enduring esp to someone from new Mexico! I liked it better than Seabiscuit, whet can i say? Even the budget was on a shoestring! Made it all that more authentically a rags to riches gem!
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