Seabiscuit was just what I needed to restore my faith in the motion picture industry. It was a glass of water in the desert in this summer's movie market.
A true story about underdogs, Tobey Maguire stars as Red Pollard, whose parents sent him off at a young age because they couldn't make ends meet. Pollard becomes a jockey despite his large frame, and starves himself to keep his job to scrape by.
Jeff Bridges plays Charles Howard, who made himself a millionaire by selling cars and lost it all big in the market crash and also struggles with the loss of a family member.
Chris Cooper is Tom Smith, a man with a gift with horses who is struggling with the end of the cowboy way of life.
When Howard decides to get a horse, he meets Smith who leads him to a troubled but inexpensive horse, Seabiscuit.
Seabiscuit was too large and had been trained from young age to lose and conform.
Together, this team of the unfortunate, but not broken, train Seabiscuit to run and compete with astonishing results. They go head to head with the well-bred and fortunate of the world, and come out ahead by a nose.
Gary Ross is the screenwriter, director, and producer -- he also worked with Maguire in Pleasantville -- and his ability to capture character within a cultural movement or time comes through just as much in Seabiscuit.
The cinematography is beautiful -- it is difficult to go wrong filming sleek, running, horses in such a polished era -- mainly the 1920s and 1940s. The detailed nature of placing the piece at that time and the care taken to actually develop characters who are changing instead of just reacting made for a rich movie. People seemed to be leaving the theater feeling satisfied, glad to have a story that doesn't necessary end tidily and might evoke thought after leaving the theater.
I think the scope of the movie might have been too large and long -- it is very difficult to capture the roaring 1920s and the poverty pangs of the great depression all as a prequel to the main plot. However, I can see how the back-story is necessary to show the true grit and determination of the underdogs in the face of hardships that are hard for our generation to understand.
The theme of the movie is American perseverance and the belief that it is spirit, not predestination, that determines your destiny.
If Seabiscuit is a little too large in scope I cannot criticize, only applaud them for the contrast this film has made with the summer crowd.
