'Dark Horse' so much more than the average underdog tale

For a movie about the fastest horses alive, Louise Osmond's veddy British documentary "Dark Horse" moves at a solid, leisurely trot, taking in the sights and sounds of cliched slow-motion footage, luxuriating in iffy re-enactments and odd cutaway shots, and finding reasons to stick in music segments.

But stay with it.

"Dark Horse" (not to be confused with the recent fact-based Maori chess drama "The Dark Horse") rewards us with an unexpectedly touching story of pure love between an investors group and the racehorse they figuratively give birth to.

"He was a working-class horse daring to take on the best of the best!" one woman says. She's Welsh bartender Jan Vokes, who comes up with a silly idea to breed her own champion racehorse by cutting in a whole bunch of labor-class investors to challenge the snooty people selfishly keeping "the sport of kings" to themselves.

Jan already breeds budgies and pigeons. What's a horse except bigger?

And so Dream Syndicate is born and goes on to become a lightning bolt on hoofs. Eventually.

Every scene in "Dark Horse" comes steeped in class rivalry, but the doc's greatest asset is how the colorful characters, speaking in melodious accents, become protective parents to their corporate offspring.

When a serious accident befalls Dream, the investors - without hesitation or objection - pony up the funds to perform risky stem-cell surgery to save their horse, even if he will never race again.

But he does, creating a real-life dramatic arc that no fictional formula sports underdog movie - uh, underhorse movie? - would touch for fear of sounding absurd.

Osmond clearly goes for emo gold over a journalistic peek beneath the surface. Sometimes, it's just healthy and necessary to have your faith in fellow humans reaffirmed by a movie about a corporation whose bottom line looks more like a horse's derrière than a ledger sheet.