'DREAMER' Acting makes film more appealing

A wise, innocent and playful Dakota Fanning stars.
By BETSY PICKLE
SCRIPPS HOWARD
The title is ungainly, but everything else about "Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story" is graceful and appealing.
A terrific cast turns a shopworn premise into a heartwarming film. Even when director John Gatins' script is at its most manipulative, the actors keep the story emotionally honest.
Set in Kentucky horse country (and shot in Kentucky and Louisiana), "Dreamer" tells how a little girl named Cale Crane (Dakota Fanning) heals her hurting family.
Cale's father, Ben (Kurt Russell), grew up watching the racehorses bred by his father, Pop (Kris Kristofferson), become champions for other owners. Ben wanted to breed and race thoroughbreds himself, but he abdicated his dreams and became a trainer of other people's horses. He's had to sell off the family farm pieces one at a time to keep food on the table.
Ben's wife, Lilly (Elisabeth Shue), sees how his disappointment has closed him off from Cale, and she pushes him to spend time with the girl. Ben lets Cale come with him to the track, and when the horse he's trained -- Sonador, nicknamed Sonya -- tumbles and breaks her right front cannon bone, he refuses to let Cale see the horse be put down.
Everett Palmer (David Morse), the overseer for the horse's owner, fires Ben in a rage but lets him have Sonya with his severance pay. Palmer thinks he's gotten the best of Ben because the horse will never be of any use, but Ben believes that if Sonya's leg can heal, she can be bred.
Things don't go as Ben had hoped, but Cale maintains her belief in Sonya and her father, and her unquenchable optimism changes life for her whole family as well as for exercise jockey Manolin (Freddy Rodriguez of "Six Feet Under") and groom Balon (Luis Guzman).
What makes it different
While it involves horses and racing, "Dreamer" isn't another "Seabiscuit," and it certainly isn't a rehash of "Racing Stripes." Sonya is a champion who was born to win, not an underdog or, even sillier, a zebra that thinks it's a horse. The theme is one of dreams, of hope, of not giving up. The players -- two- and four-legged -- deliver till viewers are sure to have lumps in their throats.
Russell and Kristofferson show their expertise at understatement. Shue, in the background, is a glowing figure of support.
But the star of the film is Fanning, whose blue-eyed soul is an uncanny mix of adult and child. She makes Cale's wisdom, innocence and playfulness believable.
Gatins, whose writing credits include "Coach Carter" and "Hardball," took his inspiration from a filly named Mariah's Storm that broke its cannon bone and managed to come back and win several races. That story is inspiring and lends credence to the plot of "Dreamer," but it hardly merits the phrase that bogs down the title.