Down the Stretch: A Horse Movie Without Much Gallop

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a weird soft spot for pre-war horse racing dramas or just need to see Mickey Rooney when he was still a kid. If you get bored by people talking about 'family honor' while wearing very stiff hats, skip it. It's not bad, it's just... very 1936.

The whole premise hinges on the idea that a kid can't be a good jockey because his dad was a crook. It’s a bit tired even for back then. You’ve seen this kind of thing in The Fiddling Fool, where the baggage of the past is basically a lead weight on the protagonist.

There is this one scene where they are arguing in the stables, and the lighting is just so dramatic that it makes the horses look more stressed than the actors. You can tell they were trying to squeeze every bit of tension out of a very small set.

The Racing Bits

The actual race footage is pretty grainy. It’s clearly spliced together from various tracks, and half the time you can’t tell if the horse is the same one from the previous shot. Does it matter? Probably not, but I noticed it, and now you have to, too.

• Mickey Rooney is basically playing himself, just with different clothes.
• The dialogue is so fast it feels like they were worried about the cost of the film stock.
• Nobody actually rides a horse like that in real life, but it looks good for the cameras.

It’s funny how these old films handle the 'big race' climax. They just have the announcer yell really loud and hope you don't notice the guys on the horses are just riding in a circle. It lacks the punch of something like The Extra Seven, which at least felt like it had some stakes.

I found myself zoning out during the romantic subplot. It feels like it was tacked on because the studio head demanded a girl in the movie. It doesn't go anywhere. She stands there, he looks sad, they walk away. Repeat.

Maybe it’s just me, but I keep wanting to see more of the horses and less of the brooding. The movie gets significantly better when it stops trying to be a heavy drama and just lets the horses run. The soundtrack is just pure background noise that keeps going even when nothing is happening.

Don't expect a masterpiece. Expect a Tuesday afternoon movie you catch on a channel that only plays black and white films while you're folding laundry. 🏇