Somebody said that it was a real shame that the Academy Awards only offer one award for Best Actor, since Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper and Tobey Maguire all qualify based on this film. Frankly, I doubt whether they’ll even be nominated; almost all Academy Award nominations seem to be for films that come out in the one or two months (or weeks) before the awards are announced, and this one is way, way too early. Pity.

In a relatively long start (half an hour or more), we are introduced to the three musketeers of this film. Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges, an actor most deserving of attention for his repertoire of jovial facial expressions) is a New York spoke maker (for bicycles), who relocates to San Francisco, attempts to sell and repair bicycles, finds out he has a talent for automobiles, and becomes a successful Bay Area car retailer. Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) is a cowboy who makes a living roping and training mustangs, until a new era of barbwire and automobiles puts him out of business. Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), who learns riding and literature on his wealthy parents’ estate, is a victim of the Great Depression, abandoned by his parents (with the best of intentions) to a life of jockeying and fisticuffs. All three of them, and their d’Artagnan, Howard’s second wife Marcela (Elizabeth Banks), ⁽¹⁾ come together around a rather poorly thought of young horse, Seabiscuit, in whom Smith, now a trainer, sees something and convinces Howard to buy. Seabiscuit, in whom other owners have seen nothing, is turned by the attentions of these characters into a genuine champion — a true match for the characters around him. When disaster strikes both Seabiscuit and Pollard, the climax of the film shows how they both come back from the expected prophecies of “He will never run again” and “He will never ride again” respectively.

Another character to enjoy is radio sports announcer “Tick Tock” McLaughlin (the ubiquitous William H. Macy), apparently a fictional compilation of various such announcers of the thirties and forties. You will enjoy seeing how sound effects and woman-in-the-street interviews were done in those halcyon days.

The film took me back to my teens, when I read Walter Farley’s famous racehorse series The Black Stallion — and, indeed, I suspect that Seabiscuit may have inspired the original novel in the series. In particular, the centerpiece of the film, the match race between Samuel Riddle’s (Eddie Jones) horse War Admiral and Seabiscuit could almost have been based on Farley’s fictional match race between Sun Raider and Cyclone (into which The Black was introduced as a, you should excuse the expression, dark horse) — except that the War Admiral / Seabiscuit race actually took place, and most of a decade before the book was written. ⁽²⁾

An excellent film, though at two and a half hours perhaps a bit long for its material. I hope it doesn’t spoil me for the rest of the weekend (Spy Kids 3 and Lara Croft 2).

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⁽¹⁾ Trivia question: in what hit 2002 film did both Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks play? In what hit 2004 film will they both play? Hint: Think Marvel.

⁽²⁾ That this match race may have inspired Farley’s is supported by the fact that, somewhere in the book or its sequel, Farley at one point misnames his fictional Sun Raider “War Raider”.

Don Harlow, July 25, 2003 04:26 PM

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