American drama

Rating: 8/10 (14 August 2006)

It is a grand story starting with one man, at the turn of the 19th century, moving out west to pursue the American dream. He repairs bicycles. There wasn't much bicycle business, but a man comes to him to fix his Stanley Steamer. He ends up reworking the thing, boosting its performance. He turns his business into this and soon creates race cars. He is quite successful, and amasses quite a fortune. Around this time, the stock market crashes, throwing the country into turmoil. His son dies in an automobile accident, and he locks up the cars in his barn and quits his work on them. He gets a divorce from his wife (quite common when a child dies, actually), and lives a melancholy life until he ends up at a horse track in Tijuana. He meets a nice young lady there, and they marry. Together they hire a trainer, jockey, and buy a horse (Seabiscut). They train this thing to race, and it wins, and keeps on winning. They then pursue the triple-crown winner, War Admiral.
This film is really pretty good. It has a good story arc, great acting, and great cinematography with beautiful landscapes. It makes you feel good, it really does. But the whole time, I kept thinking I was cheering for a horse. Oh yeah, apparently horses are people too. I guess I should have watched Black Beauty one more time. At times, they try to be philosophical, and the whole time they're working on the ultimate underdog story. The horse is about half the size of War Admiral, the jockey is too tall, blind in one eye, and broke his leg (for a minute I expected him to wind up with leukemia or something), and the trainer was a loner. But they had spirit ... American spirit. They do make this quite an American film, full of American underdogism, American pride, and the American dream. But, really, this is a great movie. I honestly would watch it again.