Immortality of a Horse-racing Legend (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2003)

This is a powerful movie with poignancy, dignity, heart and guts. This film's ending is the best I have seen in a movie in a long, long time. It is an ending that "Best Picture" movies have. It is something you will replay in your head time and time again, from Randy Newman's closing score, to Tobey Maguire's voice-over about the REAL meaning of the story, that it was believed that these 3 men were brought together by fate to heal and resurrect this race horse of GREAT pedigree (grandson of Man'O War) and lift him to horse racing Immortality, but you realize as Maguire says that it is Seabiscuit, a metaphor for a struggling America, that is the one who lifts and heals all as he crosses the finish line, once again first in his last ever race, after overcoming career-threatening injury. The way this is filmed, in slow motion, showing you Seabiscuit has come from last place to take the lead, by showing you there is NO other horse in front of him, and Maguire waxing poetic, with the score BLARING...you can't help but be moved by it. Most of the viewers in the audience wiped a tear away as this scene ended and the theater was dead-quiet as people rose to leave.