Like Gary's movies

Rating: 8/10 (12 March 2012)

Everyone must agree that the three men behind the most famous horse of his time are played by three of the best actors Hollywood now has to offer. Critics are in accord in saying Cooper's performance is the subtlest and the most real: he models the principle that Less is More. Tobey McGuire isn't given quite enough to do; his greatest accomplishment may be his lean look; he's barely recognizable, and as a former redhead myself I don't think the dye job is as bad as some have claimed. Bridges is, in his way, magnificent, but glossily iconic and therefore somewhat opaque. His resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt is pushed a bit too hard, as is the whole uplifting populist message - the 'we didn't fix the horse. He fixed us - and we fixed each other,' and 'sometimes all somebody needs is a second chance,' stuff. (It's pretty corny. But within the context of this beautifully made movie that believes in itself, we buy it.) It's important, anyway - if young people do come to see Seabiscuit - for them to get the simplified, but nonetheless just portrait of the times provided with authentic stills and footage, and the voice-over narration by iconic historian David ("The Civil War") McCullough. The travelogue of the Depression and Prohibition years includes a quiet but heartfelt plug for FDR and that, too, is moving, especially in today's post-Yuppie mood of numbingly exploitive jingoism.
Indeed each of the three actors gives a powerfully understated performance - they're like thoroughbreds who're never given their head - whose litotes (a word schoolboys learned back then) enhances the movie's epic quality by never letting us forget that their triumphs were snatched from deprivation and adversity.