Steve Miner, who directed, wisely does not make too much of the actual stunts. Determined to become a diving-horse girl after seeing a newspaper ad, she attaches herself to a traveling stunt show and determinedly works her way from stable hand to performer. In the early scenes, she is portrayed as a feisty youngster who is suspended from school after whacking another girl. Sonora's story is told crisply and simply. If the movie is draped in a gilded nostalgic haze, neither the screenplay, by Matt Williams and Oley Sassone, nor the acting goes overboard on sentimentality. An accident, which is depicted in the movie very matter-of-factly, left her with detached retinas in both eyes. An amazing twist to the story lies in the fact that for much of her career, she was blind. The act was so popular that for years the image of the diving horse and girl became an emblem of Atlantic City. "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken" tells the true story of Sonora Webster, an orphan from rural Georgia who became a featured attraction at Atlantic City's Steel Pier, diving from a 40-foot-high tower into a tank while astride a horse. That's because the past, in movies of this sort, is always more magical than the present, even if that past is the Depression, the era of this G-rated family picture. Many of the scenes in "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken," a sweet, old-fashioned movie about a girl who loves horses, are bathed in a soft golden light.
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