Tale of Four Underdogs

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2017)

Horse racing is one of a number of sports which, although immensely popular, only rarely serve as the inspiration for feature memorable films; other examples include cricket, rugby, tennis, golf, track-and-field and even soccer. "Seabiscuit", telling the story of a famous American racehorse from the 1930s, is one of the few exceptions. (Another film about Seabiscuit, which I have never seen, was made in the late forties).
Although Seabiscuit had a distinguished pedigree, he was at first regarded as an unpromising prospect. He was unusually small for a thoroughbred and had a difficult temperament. His owner Charles Howard and trainer Tom Smith, however, saw his potential, and eventually he became the best horse on the West Coast. In the thirties, however, this was little more than the equestrian equivalent of being a big fish in a small pond, as most of the great racing stables were in the East. Determined to prove Seabiscuit's status, Howard desperately tried to arrange a race against War Admiral, undoubtedly the greatest racehorse on the East Coast at this period. The media seized upon the story and started promoting the proposed race as a David-versus-Goliath clash, with Seabiscuit as the underdog, a champion of the little man in the days of the Great Depression.
The film is, in fact, the tale of four underdogs, the others being Howard, Smith and jockey Red Pollard. On the face of it, Howard, a millionaire car dealer and one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco, seems an unlikely underdog. He was, however, a self-made man and rather looked down on by the big East Coast owners, who tended to be old-money aristocrats like War Admiral's owner Samuel Riddle. He also faced problems in his personal life such as a divorce and the death of his son in a car accident. Smith, a man with a deep love for and knowledge of horses, is a virtual down-and-out before Howard hires him to manage his racing stables. Pollard is the son of a once-affluent Canadian family ruined by the Depression; he uses his skill as a horseman to make a career as a jockey, but at first has little success. He also tries his luck at boxing, but enjoys even less success at that, being left blind in one eye after one fight.
The film's main fault is that it is too long at both ends. Seabiscuit himself does not actually make an appearance until about forty-five minutes into the film; the early scenes are taken up with a rather leisurely exposition of the back-stories of the three main human characters. By rights, the climax of the film should be the duel with War Admiral which established Seabiscuit's claim to be the greatest racehorse in America. There would, however, be a problem with making this the climactic scene. Pollard, who had been injured in an accident shortly beforehand, did not actually ride Seabiscuit in this race. (He was ridden by George Woolf, a highly successful jockey whom it would be difficult to portray as an underdog). Now some scriptwriters would have had no compunction about rewriting the record-books so as to consign both Woolf and Pollard's injury to the dustbin of history, but this is a film which is more respectful of historical fact than some I could mention, possibly because it is based on a non-fiction book. The film-makers therefore obviously felt compelled to insert a lengthy coda dealing with Pollard's battle to return to fitness and with his victory in Seabiscuit's final race, and this coda inevitably comes as something of an anti-climax.
On the plus side, this is a visually attractive film and the racing scenes are exciting and well-handled. There are no outstanding acting performances- the human characters are generally outshone by the horse- but also no particularly bad ones. Overall, "Seabiscuit" is an enjoyable, heart-warming feel-good movie. Had it been a bit shorter it might have got a higher mark. 6/10 A goof. Riddle is confident that his horse will beat Seabiscuit because of his "superior breeding". In reality, an experienced owner like Riddle would have known that Seabiscuit came from the same illustrious bloodline as War Admiral. In human terms they were uncle and nephew, War Admiral being the son and Seabiscuit the grandson of Man o' War, one of the greatest American horses of all time.