Wonderful story

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2007)

"Seabiscuit" is wonderful story about horse who changed the lives of three totally different people. Seabiscuit is the name of the horse who was smaller then all the others racing horses. That was the reason why his owner often beat him and treat him badly. But three people saw something in this horse. Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire) and Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) are those people and all of them have their own reasons and stories.
Charles Howard had tragedy in his life. After he got rich on selling cars, his young son dies in car accident and soon his wife leaves him. Charles founds another woman in his life and her name is Marcela and she pulls Charles back to life. Then Charles decided to buy a horse. His name was Seabiscuit and after that never was same again. Of course Charles had too find a trainer and a jockey so Seabiscuit could race. Charles hires Tom Smith as coach and Red Pollard as jockey. Tom Smith is a man that spend all his life caring about horses but what he never had is opportunity to show how good horse trainer is he. Charles gave him that chance but that would never happen without Seabiscuit. The most complicated character is Red Pollard. His poor parents left him to another man so he can take care of young Red. But they never contacted him after that. That is shallow for me in this movie. Father and mother never contacted their loving son and I think that this scene should be added. Red also got chance to prove himself, just like Tom and that was very good shown to us.
Why this movie is good but not great to me? It's because of some "deleted" scenes (Red parents calling their son...) and mostly because of not convincing acting of Tobey Maguire. Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper and William H. Macy are great. So old school of actors did their job but young Maguire just couldn't do his. But even without Maguire's memorable role this movie is still very good and very warm story of life.