This movie starring Jessica Lange and Gwyneth Paltrow has great talent, but the production company obviously spent all its money on the stars' salaries. A film about Kentucky Thoroughbred racing should be filmed in Kentucky, not at a show horse farm in Virginia. The Kentucky Blue Grass region is uniquely identifiable, as is Virginia horse country -- and the two are not interchangeable, even in fiction. It is like making a film about New York City in Los Angeles. Did they think no one would notice? And there are plenty of Thoroughbreds in Virginia, so why did the filmmaker try to pass off big, fat show horses as racehorses? The scene at the horse sale and all its errors are even too ridiculous to mention.
The technical adviser on this film was either asleep or inept, because a scene does not pass without a glowing inaccuracy. Especially noticeable to anyone interested in horses who watches this movie (and I can't imagine anyone else would) are the dangerous ways in which the horses are handled, usually by people who are recognizable as amateurs at handling a horse. The most glaring fax pas surrounds the drug oxytocin that Jessica Lange's character removes from the cabinet: the label clearly states "erythromycin tablets." Again, did the filmmaker think no one would notice?
Literary license is one thing, but this movie goes way, way beyond that and into the depths of the toilet.