Last night was the highly anticipated ESPN documentry Charismatic. I was tweeting throughout the hour film with others and also checked the film. The director, Steve Michaels, is the son of former ABC Sports stalwart and currect NBC Sunday Night Football play by play man Al Michaels (you can hear that they sound almost alike). The film which is an hour in length focuses mainly on jockey Chris Antley's fall, rise again, and fall from grace.
They interviewed Gary Stevens (who rode General Challange in the 1999 TC and now works for NBC), and several other people close in Chris' racing life including BloodHorse's Steve Hasken and DRF's Jay Hovdey. They also interviewed assistants to Charismatic's trainer D. Wayne Lukas (who declined to participate in the doc).
Honestly while there where some bad reviews on Twitter I found, as a whole it was an enjoying doc. The doc did not that long, only an hour in length. They didn't have much time to put alot of the footage that they most likely had from the interviews. It also didn't put Lukas in a good light throwing Chris under the bus after he helped saved his charge.
No matter what way you look at it, it's still a heart breaking documentary and I give Charismatic 3.5 out of 5 stars.
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