Starring: Kurt Russell (I), Dakota Fanning, Oded Fehr

8 out of 10 stars: If there was a movie I absolutely did not want to see this year, it was Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story. So of course I loved about every minute of it. A supremely well-done family movie about a girl, her dad, a horse, and lots of love, it's about as clichéd a story as you'll ever find, but in the hands of writer-director John Gatins, Dreamer turns out to be very smart, fairly unsentimental, and not at all condescending. In an industry where violin swells and tinkly piano notes are shorthand for emotion, Dreamer digs down for something more authentic, and earns its laughs and tears honestly, without resorting to gimmicks. In fact, this is a horse movie where the horse isn't imbued with some kind of magical, mystical quality but is a flesh-and-blood animal that serves more as a catalyst and less as a symbol. To paraphrase another horse-drawn vehicle, this horse is just a horse, of course.

Said horse, named Sonador (pronounced Sonya-dor), is the object that brings together taciturn horse trainer Ben Crane (Kurt Russell) and his quiet, adoring daughter Cale (Dakota Fanning) after what appears to be a long period of emotional dormancy, where he barely acknowledges her existence and she worships him from afar. Tagging along with Ben to work one day, Cale is exposed to the world of horse racing, which she finds absolutely fascinating, though for her dad it's a day-to-day struggle to make ends meet. When a beautiful thoroughbred filly takes a terrible fall during a race, Cale begs and pleads with her dad not to have the animal put down. Ben complies, partly out of sparing his daughter the sight of the grisly task, and partly to spite the evil horse owner (David Morse, practically twirling a moustache) who's a perennial thorn in his side. The spite results in Ben losing his job, and part of his not-too-generous severance package is the lame horse, which he takes home and plans to heal up to the point where she can be bred. In a melodramatic turn of events, though, Sonador is infertile, and Ben is ready to get rid of her once and for all when Cale decides to run away from home, and lo and behold, it's the horse who provides the extremely fast running.

There is really little point in explicating the rest of the plot of Dreamer, as it's entirely too predictable, but the amazing thing about this movie is that, while you see every twist and turn coming, you await them with a breathless kind of anticipation. The unfolding of the story is so deft and tenderly done that you can't help but feeling drawn into it; you'd have to have a heart two sizes too small not to be affected by this movie. Gatins, who was an actor before turning filmmaker, shows an instinctual rapport with his actors, and aside from a few obvious touches - Elisabeth Shue, as Russell's wife and Fanning's mom, sports one too many countryfolk outfits; Fanning owns a pair of too adorable horse-shaped slippers; Russell is seen scrunched over a calculator to shadow imminent financial doom for the family - keeps his characters from falling into stereotypical traps.

And the focus, when it's not at the racetrack, is entirely on family drama - in addition to Ben and Cale's growing relationship, Ben has to mend fences with both his wife and father (Kris Kristofferson), who each believe he's suffering the fallout from a dream deferred. The economy of the scenes, which sometimes culminate in arguments that stop just before they become tedious, shows a smart filmmaker at work who respects his audience. When it comes to emotions, Gatins definitely prefers to show and not tell, and all his actors are more than up to the task. Kristofferson, for the first time in years, comes off less as charmingly crochety and more as bitter and resentful, with a hint of empathy, and Shue brings a quiet grace to her handful of scenes, even one requiring her to get misty-eyed over a flowery hat. Russell in particular seems to be reaping the benefits of his career renaissance, using his careworn handsomeness to its best advantage as he adroitly underplays every scene that would have any another actor pulling out all the emotional stops; his reticence actually draws you further in.

All this stellar work, however, is a pale shadow in comparison to the dominating, powerful, phenomenal screen star that is Dakota Fanning. I used to find it strangely disturbing that Fanning was so effective an actress; now, after being inundated with stellar performance after stellar performance, I merely take it for granted that she is one of the best American screen actresses working. Fanning easily, capably, and strongly holds each and every scene she has with an adult, whether she's staring down the cruelly evil Morse, persuading the ruling board of the Breeders Cup race to let her horse into the race, or leading both Russell and Kristofferson on her quest to bring Sonador up to championship status; her interaction with Russell is probably some of the best screen work you'll see between two actors this year. And Gatins saddles her with only one crying scene, and even then, when Russell says something particularly condescending, she snaps to attention and forcefully barks, "Don't treat me like a child!" At that moment, I myself snapped to attention, as I thought, did Jane Fonda suddenly walk into the room? Even at the tender age of eleven, Fanning is ready to give some of the best actresses of our time a run for their money.