**SPOILERS** Hard to gage since it has what seems like so many unnecessary sub-plots in it. "Simpatico" is basically about guilt on the part of three persons Vince Webb, Nick Nolte/Shawn Hatsoy, and Lyle & Rosie Carter, Jeff Bridges/Liam Waite & Sharon Stone/Kimberly Williams,who were involved, some twenty years ago in betting on a string of "Ringers". A "Ringer" is a horse who's secretly entered in a race with a false and atrociously bad past performance record in order to fool the betting public. Thus winning races that he or she is not even supposed to be in by going off at astronomical odds.
Were shown in a number of ill-timed and confusing flash-backs that the three track cheats were discovered by local track official Simms, Albert Finney, who was about to turn them into the authorities. Simms was set up in a blackmail scheme by both Vince and his then girlfriend Rosie. With Simms banging her in a motel room as Vince was hiding outside with a camera taking photos of the incriminating tryst.
The movie starts with a drunk and homeless-looking Vince in Cucamunga Calif calling Lyle,now a major horse breeder, in Kentucky frantic that he's about to be arrested and he'll be forced to tell everything he knows to the cops. You get the impression that Vince had been blackmailing Lyle, as well as Simms, for years to keep up his lifestyle, paying for his rent and bottles of booze. As he masqueraded around town posing as a private detective an act that he uses to both impress and pick up girls. Before you can even catch you breath Lyle jets right down to Cucamunga and finds out from Vince that his girlfriend Cecilia,Catherine Keener,a local supermarket cashier is threatening to have him arrested for sexually abusing her. Which Vince says is all a pack of lies.
Going to see Cicilia Lyle tries to get her to change her mind in reporting Vince to the police only to find out that she has no idea what he, or Vince, is talking about and almost throws a confused and befuddled Lyle out of her apartment. Lyle later puts two and two together and realizes that Vince tricked him into coming to Cucamunga in order to implement some weird scheme he dreamed up. All this in order to steal his car and identity, or wallet loaded with dozens of his credit cards, and go back to Kentucky to resume his relationship with Lyle's wife Rosie. Whom he once proposed marriage to and that she accepted.
Lyle wakes up in Vince's cluttered pad,after drinking himself unconscious,and starts to have second thoughts about going back to his life as an ultra-rich Kentucky horse breeder and decides to live as an unemployed bum. Spending all his time sitting on the railroad tracks opening up a can of beans and watching the world go by. The movie never really gets any better after that but only more confusing with Lyle having Cicilia go, all expenses paid, to Kentucky to find Vince and get back the blackmail photos of his wife Rosie having sex with Simms. What all this has to do with Vince's bird-brain scheme doesn't make any sense at all since he has no plans to use the photos, that he seemed to have be using for twenty years, to blackmail anyone but destroy them in order to clear his guilty conscience. We also have Vince track down the disgraced Simms who now uses the name of Ryan Ames,a local blood-horse historian. Vince goes to Simms' office to, what seemed to me, make a mea culpa about what he did to destroy his career as a racing and track official. Simms almost thanks Vince for getting him out of business of policing race-track improprieties and going into a business that he felt that he was born to do researching the bloodlines of thoroughbred horses.
Rosie who seemed to have been smashed and out cold pops up with a hangover just when Vince shows up, unannounced, at her and Lyle's mansion. When Vince tearfully apologizes to Rosie about all the trouble he caused her and Lyle with the photos Rosie comes across as forgiving at first. But when Vince shows them to her she blows her stack and almost blows Vince's brains out for what she at first was totally uninterested in! Simms later meets Cecilia who was sent by Lyle to tell him, together with a load of cash, how sorry he was about what he did to destroy his career. Instead Simms get the hots for her making the confused young women feel that she's being exploited by the two,Simm & Lyle, weirdo's. Cecilia is then put at ease when Simms invites her, this in late October, to the upcoming Kentucky Derby that's to be run the next year on the first Saturday in May!
If all this wasn't enough to already drive you nuts there's the case of Lyle's triple crown winning stallion Simpatico who was syndicated for 30 million dollars and sold off to a group of billionaire Arabian businessmen. Simpatico to the shock of Lyle Rosie and those who bought him was discovered to be impotent and unable to successfully cover and put any mares into fold at the starting price of 75 thousand dollars a pop.
Rosie knowing that her beloved horse Simpatico not being able to replicate himself will end up as dog food takes him out for a last ride. It's then then that she puts the poor animal mercifully to sleep with a bullet in his brain. Vince now back with Lyle in Cucamunga takes the blackmail photos on a deserted hill, overlooking the main highway, burning them in a campfire. Thus erasing the whole sleazy episode out of their lives forever as the sun majestically sets on both them and the movie.
Were shown in a number of ill-timed and confusing flash-backs that the three track cheats were discovered by local track official Simms, Albert Finney, who was about to turn them into the authorities. Simms was set up in a blackmail scheme by both Vince and his then girlfriend Rosie. With Simms banging her in a motel room as Vince was hiding outside with a camera taking photos of the incriminating tryst.
The movie starts with a drunk and homeless-looking Vince in Cucamunga Calif calling Lyle,now a major horse breeder, in Kentucky frantic that he's about to be arrested and he'll be forced to tell everything he knows to the cops. You get the impression that Vince had been blackmailing Lyle, as well as Simms, for years to keep up his lifestyle, paying for his rent and bottles of booze. As he masqueraded around town posing as a private detective an act that he uses to both impress and pick up girls. Before you can even catch you breath Lyle jets right down to Cucamunga and finds out from Vince that his girlfriend Cecilia,Catherine Keener,a local supermarket cashier is threatening to have him arrested for sexually abusing her. Which Vince says is all a pack of lies.
Going to see Cicilia Lyle tries to get her to change her mind in reporting Vince to the police only to find out that she has no idea what he, or Vince, is talking about and almost throws a confused and befuddled Lyle out of her apartment. Lyle later puts two and two together and realizes that Vince tricked him into coming to Cucamunga in order to implement some weird scheme he dreamed up. All this in order to steal his car and identity, or wallet loaded with dozens of his credit cards, and go back to Kentucky to resume his relationship with Lyle's wife Rosie. Whom he once proposed marriage to and that she accepted.
Lyle wakes up in Vince's cluttered pad,after drinking himself unconscious,and starts to have second thoughts about going back to his life as an ultra-rich Kentucky horse breeder and decides to live as an unemployed bum. Spending all his time sitting on the railroad tracks opening up a can of beans and watching the world go by. The movie never really gets any better after that but only more confusing with Lyle having Cicilia go, all expenses paid, to Kentucky to find Vince and get back the blackmail photos of his wife Rosie having sex with Simms. What all this has to do with Vince's bird-brain scheme doesn't make any sense at all since he has no plans to use the photos, that he seemed to have be using for twenty years, to blackmail anyone but destroy them in order to clear his guilty conscience. We also have Vince track down the disgraced Simms who now uses the name of Ryan Ames,a local blood-horse historian. Vince goes to Simms' office to, what seemed to me, make a mea culpa about what he did to destroy his career as a racing and track official. Simms almost thanks Vince for getting him out of business of policing race-track improprieties and going into a business that he felt that he was born to do researching the bloodlines of thoroughbred horses.
Rosie who seemed to have been smashed and out cold pops up with a hangover just when Vince shows up, unannounced, at her and Lyle's mansion. When Vince tearfully apologizes to Rosie about all the trouble he caused her and Lyle with the photos Rosie comes across as forgiving at first. But when Vince shows them to her she blows her stack and almost blows Vince's brains out for what she at first was totally uninterested in! Simms later meets Cecilia who was sent by Lyle to tell him, together with a load of cash, how sorry he was about what he did to destroy his career. Instead Simms get the hots for her making the confused young women feel that she's being exploited by the two,Simm & Lyle, weirdo's. Cecilia is then put at ease when Simms invites her, this in late October, to the upcoming Kentucky Derby that's to be run the next year on the first Saturday in May!
If all this wasn't enough to already drive you nuts there's the case of Lyle's triple crown winning stallion Simpatico who was syndicated for 30 million dollars and sold off to a group of billionaire Arabian businessmen. Simpatico to the shock of Lyle Rosie and those who bought him was discovered to be impotent and unable to successfully cover and put any mares into fold at the starting price of 75 thousand dollars a pop.
Rosie knowing that her beloved horse Simpatico not being able to replicate himself will end up as dog food takes him out for a last ride. It's then then that she puts the poor animal mercifully to sleep with a bullet in his brain. Vince now back with Lyle in Cucamunga takes the blackmail photos on a deserted hill, overlooking the main highway, burning them in a campfire. Thus erasing the whole sleazy episode out of their lives forever as the sun majestically sets on both them and the movie.