The jockeys are sometimes friends, sometimes mortal enemies, and they often shout at one another during races. The movie gives me a much better sense of how difficult and dangerous it is to ride one of those grand animals in a race. The movie's races are thrilling because they must be thrilling there's no way for the movie to miss on those, but writer-director Gary Ross and his cinematographer, John Schwartzman, get amazingly close to the action it's hard for us to figure out where the camera is, since we seem to be suspended at times between two desperately striving horses and their jockeys. It is a horse all the time, a horse with the ability to run very fast and an inability to lose, when guided by Smith's strategy and Pollard's firm love. The movie doesn't make the mistake of treating the horse like a human. Soon he has everything in place except a horse, and Smith has unaccountable faith in Seabiscuit. And there are sequences showing how he encounters Pollard ( Tobey Maguire) and Smith ( Chris Cooper). There is a leisurely introduction to the times and the three men before the horse makes its appearance we see once again the classic battle between the automobile and the horse Charles Howard ( Jeff Bridges) begins as a bicycle salesman, is asked to repair a Stanley Steamer, takes it apart and makes some improvements, and before long is a millionaire who buys a farm and turns the stables into a garage.Īfter a family tragedy, however, he changes directions and becomes a horse owner and breeder. The story has the classic structure of a sports movie, with a setback right before the big race at the end, but, like Seabiscuit, it's a slow starter. If an underdog like Seabiscuit could win against larger and more famous horses with distinguished pedigrees, then maybe there was a chance for anyone. And in the somewhat simplified calculus of the movie, both Seabiscuit and Roosevelt's New Deal, more or less in that order, were a shot in the American arm. The nation needed something to believe in. The Depression had brought America to its knees.

'Seabiscuit,' based on the best-seller by Laura Hillenbrand, tells the stories of these three men and the horse against the backdrop of the times.

Seabiscuit by laura hillenbrand