A funny thing happens in the opening moments of the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award-winning doc “Dark Horse.” The movie swells with unusual pride, inspiration and hope. Well-crafted visuals, homespun wistful folk songs by Anne Nikitin and sanguine testimonials tug on your heartstrings. Before the opening credits roll, the subjects of the documentary discuss their faded dreams, depressed town and the unlikely animal that transformed their lives, and so “Dark Horse” lays out the emotional building blocks for what appears will be a moving, triumphant come-from-behind story. It’s disarming how the doc, without having revealed its full story or earned its emotional stripes yet, hooks you in…or hoofs you in.
Then “Dark Horse” hits reset and begins properly as a fairy tale about small-town hopefulness rescued by an unlikely source of inspiration. In an impoverished ex-mining town in Wales, unassuming townsfolk go about their day. Through fate, barmaid Jan...
