Review: 'Seabiscuit' no win, but good show
Despite early faltering, horse sense gives movie legs
By Paul Clinton
CNN Reviewer
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Tobey Maguire plays jockey "Red" Pollard, Chris Cooper is trainer Tom Smith, and Jeff Bridges plays owner Charles Howard in "Seabiscuit."
Story Tools
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(CNN) -- In transferring Laura Hillenbrand's magnificent best-seller "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" to the screen, writer/director Gary Ross had some amazing material to work with -- a classic underdog story of a horse and his human partners. But the result is, at best, uneven.
Seabiscuit, the horse, doesn't make his appearance until 50 minutes in. Until then, the film feels like an average documentary, as the closing of the Western frontier, growing American industrialization, and the Great Depression are described in strokes large and small.
Only then does the story of this amazing horse and three men who found redemption by believing in the impossible get off the ground.
The film version stars Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper. Those three men, jockey Johnny "Red" Pollard (Maguire), owner Charles Howard (Bridges) and trainer Tom Smith (Cooper) are the heart and soul of this drama.
Magical convergence
"Seabiscuit's" racing scenes are thrillingly filmed.
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All three had been beaten down by life.
Pollard's large, prosperous family was hit hard by the Depression; at a young age, he was virtually abandoned at a racetrack and left to make his own way in the world as a jockey and sometime boxer. Howard was a self-made man who earned millions by selling Buicks to a newly mobilized nation, but his life fell apart when his son was killed in a car crash and his marriage failed. Smith was a cowboy -- with a gift for dealing with horses -- who saw his Old West way of life disappear.
By happenstance, all three lives converged, thanks to an undersized racehorse with a funny gait and a big heart -- Seabiscuit.
Once the men and the horse are united, the film begins to gain traction. The racing scenes are astounding: Ross has put his camera in unique places to capture these magnificent animals at unusual angles, as they thunder around a racetrack approaching speeds of 50 miles per hour.
The acting by all three stars is rock solid: Maguire, Bridges and Cooper all merge naturally into their roles and actually seem to inhabit their characters.
Hall of Fame jockey and first-time actor Gary Stevens plays the pivotal role of George "The Iceman" Woolf -- who filled in for Pollard aboard Seabiscuit for a key race -- and he's also very believable. William H. Macy (one of the best actors on the planet) plays the film's only fictional character, racetrack announcer "Tick Tock" McGlaughlin; he brings comic relief to the movie, but provides little in the way of advancing the plot.
Difficult job
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Elizabeth Banks plays Marcela, who becomes Charles Howard's second wife and a key force in his stable.
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Adapting a book into a movie is always a dicey process. Figuring out what to keep in, what to leave out, and how to compress information into a dramatic format is not easy, especially when the book in question is so rich in detail and information.
However, it's surprising that Seabiscuit's huge weight handicap is never mentioned. The fact that the horse was always loaded down with as much as 130 pounds was a big issue in the book, but is never mentioned in the film. Also, the handling of Pollard's blindness in one eye is rammed awkwardly into the story and doesn't gel with reality at all.
Despite that nitpicking, the film does pick up speed as Seabiscuit's legend grows and the odds against him continue to mount. And Ross conveys the incredible danger involved in racing thoroughbred horses in such tight quarters, at such high speeds. You'll find yourself rooting for Seabiscuit to cross the finish line first, even though the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
"Seabiscuit" is a good movie, but it could have been a great one -- it just misses by a nose.
"Seabiscuit" opens nationwide on Friday, July 25, and is rated PG-13.
