Ruffian Movie - Review

I enjoyed the Ruffian movie this Saturday night, but did not feel compelled to write review here on the blog. Then yesterday I received a great review via a comment on the blog. I wanted to share this review from Doug.

I first startd training racehorses over 30 years ago and I would like to say how shocked I was in finally being able to view a horse racing movie that had the very minimum of goofs in it. Amazing! ESPN and ABC aired one of the most realistic racing movies lastnight, I have ever seen and that goes back to the B movies of the 30s up to the modern, "Dreamer" movie. Most all of them are honey cesspools obviously written, directed, produced by people with limited backstretch experience."Ruffian", last night got it mostly right! I would guess Bill Nack is the guiding light to this rarity though I am not too familiar with the creditedwriters. Maybe they know something too. They must! The track jargon and dialogue seemed pretty true to life for a change. Shepard did a marvelous job portraying an old timey kind of trainer in Frank Whiteley. The sugar-coated emotionality common to these types of movies was unbelievablyabsent. The racing scenes were pretty nicely photographed considering that this was a low budget TV movie. I can only criticize the movie in a fewplaces. The racing scenes were obviously speeded up as is common in most racing movies. Apparently movie makers feel that normal race scenes photographed in real time seem too slow to the movie goer. Hehee. I also fault the bandaging technique of Sam Shepard but, hey, those scenes were pretty skeletal in nature. Lastly, most of the morning track scenes lackedthe customary busy activity of a real track, but they no doubt used vacated tracks or tracks under controlled conditions. No biggie. The movie is breath of fresh air to all of the crap preceding it in years past. I can die in peace now.

Since the comment came in anonymously, but was signed Doug, I can not give full credit. Does anyone know who Doug may be....He has been trining race horses for over 30 years?