The Dark Horse

Everyone's a sucker for an underdog story and director Louise Osmond recounts the tale of racing outsider Dream Alliance with a judicious blend of sentiment, wit and inspiration. The plucky horse bounces back from serious injury at Aintree to win the Welsh Grand National in 2009, but this is also a poignant study of a disenfranchised mining community pulling together in the depths of a recession. Osmond might have delved deeper into the morality of National Hunt racing, but with editor Joby Gee she ably relates the account with archive footage, photographs and a few blurry re-constructions. Holding it all together are the recollections of Jan Vokes, the barmaid from Cefn Fforest near Caerphilly who fancied owning a racehorse and persuaded 25 regulars at the Blackwood Working Men's Club to invest £10 a week in a spindly foal of unprepossessing parentage. Her chatter keeps things down-to-earth when Osmond and composer Anne Nikitin are tempted to tug hard on the heartstrings and she gives it plenty of feel-good charm, too.