Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fantastic!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Horse racing is part of my life! As a huge race fan and handicapper I was so glad that ESPN funded this movie! Ruffian was the greatest filly ever to step on to a race track, bar none! This film did portray how good she was and did tell the true story of this race horse. Thought the cast was good and I liked the fact the movie was about the horse and the horses relationship with its connections. NOT! Like Secretariat! Which was a good movie, but! Secretariat was more about Penny Chenery-Tweety then it was this generations greatest race horse (male horse that is). If you actually looked at Ruffian's past performance sheet is all 1's ! Always in the lead and never gave it up.. The only time you see a 2 the tragic match race that killed her. Ruffian did not have good family lines when it came to being perfectly sound.. her Dam (Shenanigans) had bone issues in her front two legs and unfortunately that passes down..One thing they did not (or at least I didn't see) was a HUGE omission from the pubic as to why she broke down. If you look at the actual race footage there was a seagull on the track and as the two horses raced closer to the stupid bird the bird flew away. The footage reviled that Ruffian actually was looking at the bird as she races and had one bad step and it as over. Many Many people believe that if the at stupid bird was not there Ruffian would have won the race against Foolish Pleasure and may have had a massive career in front of her.. Will never know! Good movie. Heartbreaking. And one of my favourite scenes was right at the end when you see Frank Whitley look at the new 2 year olds being taken out of the carts. You see that look on his face that he knew he had one in a million horse a year earlier in Ruffian and there will never be one like her again. This is very true in horse racing!! Its like winning the lottery.. One in a million chance that you get a horse that can defy belief .. Thats whats so great about the sport! 30,000 foals are born each year. 20 make it to the Kentucky Derby at 3 years old and only one out of those 30,000 will go down in history.

bsmith's comment wasn't correct, "several hundred thousand and hundreds of reporters and editors" makes NO sense lol.This film is good and i did enjoy it but it was very sad and definitely not for the faint hearted. The bit where the filly break her foot isn't very pleasant to watch. I have only seen it once but would watch it again. I do love horse riding and I would like to be a kind jockey, so i am really into these films. I can only watch it on youtube so if anyone knows any FREE sites to watch films on please let me know. There are some good parts in this film like where they do try to save the filly instead of putting her straight to sleep.

More annoying to me than the horse racing inaccuracies were the portrayals of journalists who covered Ruffian. This was 1975 -- not 1935. Snap-brim hats with "Press" cards stuck in them were long gone by the 1970s. And the newsroom at Newsday, Nack's employer, was a joke. The place looks like it's a weekly, with perhaps five people working in it, rather than a major paper with a circulation of several hundred thousand and hundreds of reporters and editors. And there's always only one editor around. Moreover, Nack's desk, which for some crazy reason has an adding machine on it, is nearly empty and spotless -- which could never happen. And he has a 1950s vintage manual typewriter. Even in 1975, most big newspapers had electric typewriters. Getting the little stuff right always helps to make the big picture better.

I had just gotten interested in the Triple Crown races for colts when the famous "Battle of the Sexes" aired, and I do remember what happened to Ruffian. If you are not familiar with the story, I won't give away the ending, but the events in the last few minutes of this movie may be upsetting to some people.Sam Shepard did an outstanding job as the horse's trainer. Some of his reactions were not what I expected, but since the characters in this movie were supposedly real, perhaps he really did what was depicted. In that case, Frank Whiteley was an amazing man. He cared about his horses and about doing the right thing, but at some point he had to say yes, it's terrible, but life goes on.Frank Whaley did a very good job as a leading sports reporter. His personality didn't appeal to me personally, but he was quite a character. Vladimir Diaz did well as Jacinto Vasquez, the jockey who rode Ruffian on several occasions, a man depicted as having high moral standards despite all that was happening.The track announcers were excellent. And most of the leading actors gave good performances.The horse action was well done. We saw numerous unusual camera angles of the races. Every win by Ruffian was shown in slow motion.I liked the joke played on the reporters at Ruffian's stall. All this hype was seen as ridiculous by certain characters, as well it should have been. And this was 30 years before Paris Hilton!Effective use was made of what appeared to be real footage of fans of both Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure as horse racing's answer to Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs approached. And of course extras wore the t-shirts and cheered for their horse. This all drove home the point that this event was kind of silly. Several times it was suggested Ruffian could have just competed against the guys--Rags to Riches did just that the day I saw this--but if that never happened, then it couldn't have been in the movie. Displayed on the screen was a reminder that some events in the movie were fictional. Included among these was the specific event--shown in slow motion--that may have caused what I'm not giving away. Also shown on screen at the movie's end was the fact that no one really knows WHAT happened.The only weakness I saw was the fact that Ruffian's early career was rushed. The big event in her life was given so much time that the only way to adequately show her progress would have been to make this a three-hour movie (commercials included) rather than two. Perhaps two and a half would have been enough.But for the time allotted, this was a fine effort.