Heartwarming

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2007)

This wonderful movie is the kind to which the epithet 'heartwarming' can be applied without making you want to reach for the sick-bag. It's a tear-jerker but it manipulates your emotions very skillfully; (it's got a cast of very fine actors who never succumb to the sentimentality factor). It purports to be the story of the real-life, (and legendary), racehorse Seabiscuit but really it's the story of three men whose lives become intrinsically linked through the horse. I suppose what it's really about is family; these men are lost boys who find in each other the families they have lost and in the roles Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper and Tobey Maguire give marvellous performances, (Cooper is quite magnificent), as well as being a history of America in the years following the Great Crash, and thanks to John Schwartzman's wonderful cinematography it looks absolutely gorgeous.