Seabiscuit Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 24th, 2003
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Seabiscuit might be this year's version of Road to Perdition - a Christmas movie stuck in the summer, debuting too early in the season for Oscar voters to remember. Then again, Perdition was one of a handful of critically praised films (i.e., Minority Report, The Bourne Identity, Signs) aimed at moviegoers too smart for things like XXX and Eight-Legged Freaks, so maybe the dearth of quality pictures in 2003 will help Seabiscuit's chances six months from now during awards season.
It certainly deserves recognition, what with being the best non-animated mainstream film to be released so far this calendar year (Finding Nemo is still atop the food chain). Seabiscuit is also aided by being based on Laura Hillenbrand's beloved bestseller that everyone who reads has already read (as opposed to Perdition, which was based on a comic book nobody read). Side benefits also include an adaptation by a guy who can do homey and uplifting without being overly schmaltzy (director Gary Ross, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Big and Dave), as well as amazing Raging Bull-type horseracing scenes expertly cobbled together by William Goldberg (the Oscar-nominated editor of The Insider and of Ross's directorial debut, Pleasantville).
Oh, and there's the little matter of the cast, which includes bonafide box office star (and executive producer) Tobey Maguire, reigning Oscar champion Chris Cooper and four-time Oscar nominee Jeff "The Big Lebowski" Bridges. The gaunt Maguire has never been better, and Cooper sure seems like a lock for his second straight trip to the Academy Awards. And, cripes, when William H. Macy (Door to Door) is nearly an afterthought to your discussion of acting, you know you're dealing with a different animal altogether. His racetrack reporting character, the only one that wasn't in Hillenbrand's book, serves as an effective Greek chorus that helps to pull the massive story together.
And then there's that story, which we may as well go ahead and call the greatest American underdog tale since the Revolutionary War: Three broken men and one broken horse meet and help each other heal through the wonders of paramutual wagering (with 70-to-1 odds, no less). Each is an important spoke in the big wheel that makes it possible for the other three to get over their tragic pasts, not to mention sparking the entire country out of the mire of the Great Depression. The ties to history are presented via narration from renowned historian David McCullough, stills, newsreels and audio footage.
Bridges (K-Pax) is automobile tycoon Charles Howard, who preaches about the importance of the future until his only child is killed in a car crash, and then goes back in time to play with ponies. Maguire (Spider-Man) is Howard's replacement son, Red Pollard, an angry young jockey who never quite recovered from his parents abandoning him when they lost everything in the Depression. Cooper (Adaptation) is former mustang wrangler Tom "The Original Horse Whisperer" Smith, whose beloved Old West has disappeared thanks to Howard's stupid cars. Seabiscuit, the stocky, knobby-kneed grandson of the legendary Manowar, might actually be the film's most interesting yet most underutilized character, the problem being that most Hollywood horses don't have much range (perhaps they should have cast Sarah Jessica Parker).
Fans of Hillenbrand's book will understand why so much material was left out of Ross's film, which still clocks in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, though they'll likely be crossing their fingers for an extras-packed DVD with a longer version or dozens of deleted scenes. Most notably absent are the mind games Smith played with reporters, and that glorious shit glacier that cut a swath of smelly destruction through Mexico. But anyone unhappy with Seabiscuit, especially after suffering though a summer full of colon-ized films long on title and short on originality, needs to have their head examined.
2:20 - PG-13 for some sexual situations and violent sports-related images
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