By Richard Winters
My Rating: 7 out of 10
My Rating: Boy raises a racehorse.
Based on the short story ‘Ruidoso’ by John McPhee the plot centers around Lloyd (Walter Matthau) a single parent raising three sons. The youngest, Casey (Michael Hershewe), decides to raise a colt whose mother has died. At first, they’re not sure the colt will make it, but eventually he grows into being a racehorse that gets named Casey’s Shadow. Lloyd, who’s been looked upon as a loser for many years, feels this is his one chance to make money and thus enters the horse into the All-American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico despite the fact that the horse has been recently injured and running him could endanger his life.
Upfront the film seems similar to many other young boy with horse movies to the extent you wonder why even bother to make this one though it does manage to have some memorable moments. The biggest one being the birth of the colt that gets captured in graphic, vivid style that one will find either a beauty of nature, or grotesque. I also liked the scene involving the horses being put into their stalls before the race and how some of them were difficult to maneuver and even resisted. The shot of the dirty dinner dishes inside a grimy bathtub filled with yellowish water is an image you won’t get out of your mind as well as the horse that gets poisoned to death and keels over in dramatic fashioned making it appear very real and not sure how they could train a horse to do that, but it’s quite effective.
On the casting end I wasn’t convinced this was the best career choice for Matthau as his character is too similar to the one he played in The Bad News Bears where he was a down-and-out guy with little ambition who suddenly finds his competitive edge. In that film his transition was fun, but here it’s strained and not nearly as engaging. It also seemed a mistake to make him the protagonist as it’s the boy that spends the most time with the horse, so he essentially should’ve been the main hero.
While I liked how the three sons aren’t afraid to question their father’s judgement and many times seem to be the mature ones I felt there were too many of them. The two oldest ones lacked any distinction and could’ve easily been combined to just one person. The youngest, Casey, came off like some Italian kid from Brooklyn, especially with his long hair, and I didn’t for a second believe these were boys raised in Cajun country particularly since they made no attempt to convey an accent authentic to the region, which makes it feel like they’re miscast.
The supporting cast is interesting, but underused. Alexis Smith has an icy appeal, but it never comes to full fruition. Would’ve liked more of a confrontation between her and Matthau. Murray Hamilton is always good playing a conniving, amoral character, but his presence is intermittent and doesn’t ultimately do much to propel the story. Robert Webber fares best. He’s known mainly for playing sniveling types, but here falls into the rugged western persona surprisingly well. The only beef with him, and it’s not his fault, is that he gets beaten up by Matthau in what looks to be a pretty decent pummeling, but then later it shows him fully recovered. To make it realistic he should’ve been seen with bandages, crutches, or cuts.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Released: March 17, 1981
Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Martin Ritt
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
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