On Seeing Seabiscuit (spoiler-free)
Posted on July 22, 2003 at 7:18 am | No Comments
Saw a sneak screening of the new filmic horse-fest called Seabiscuit last night, and it was officially the first time I’ve ever been scanned with a metal detector and had my bag searched at a preview. It wasn’t for firearms or brass knuckles (not exactly a rough crowd at this high-brow preview)… no, the search was for digital recording equipment. A by-product of bit-torrent and other internet-based file-sharing services, it seems. Only five days before the film’s official release, but that’s still enough time for someone to record it, encode it, and throw it up there for the masses. Faster, faster, faster.
So, yeah, the film itself. For the most part, I like my movies with an edge, a little darker, a little different. Sure, there are a few fairly mainstream flicks in my faves list, but the ones that stick with me are the ones that take chances. For that reason, I have this urge to pick on Seabiscuit for the fairly manipulative, middle-of-the-road, overly-sentimental story that it tells.
But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It just has too many good things going for it, more than enough to push my inherent indie-snobishness down.
First off, the acting. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie so perfectly cast, down to every single character. Chris Cooper and William H. Macy can do no wrong in my book, and they just shine in this sucker… Cooper as the stoic cowboy, Macy as the comic relief radio-announcer. Tobey McGuire, Jeff Bridges, and Elizabeth Banks… all excellent in their roles. Hell, we even get a nice Danny Strong sighting (Jonathan from Buffy). The biggest revelation, though, was a gentleman named Gary Stevens, a renowned real-life jockey who has a history of winning races, but not a bit of acting in his past. I had no idea he was a rider, no clue that he’d never acted before… he was so, so good in his role of famed jockey George Woolf. Usually, when real athletes are cast against a main character, they’re kept to bit players and one-liners, but Stevens had a major part to play, and he did it perfectly. Another inspirational bit of casting was having author David McCullough (John Adams, Truman) narrate the introduction and interspersed historical pieces that give the film much of it’s context, and help tie the story of Seabiscuit into the story of the U.S. in the wake of the depression.
As for the plot … well, let’s just say I’ve very glad I didn’t read the book. I’d imagine that knowing the winners of the climactic races would take quite a bit away from the drama, although they’re so excitingly filmed that I could be wrong. If you’ve seen the previews, you know the basics… it’s a story of underdogs, comebacks, second-chances. Not just for men and horses, but for a country. It delivers, although I thought that the message was more than a little ham-fisted. In particular, a couple of Jeff Bridges’ speeches were a bit over the top, but that’s not to say they were that out of place. If this movie is anything, it’s not subtle. It knows what it wants to do, what it wants the audience to feel, and it goes for it.
Leave your cynicism at the door for this one, folks. This movie is razor clean-cut… old-fashioned in every sense of the phrase. Hell, even Tobey’s occasional cursin’ sounded out of place. It’s a safe, solid, hope-filled story, with no real villian, no irony… and it’s surpasses mediocrity thanks to great actors in wide-open, beautifully-filmed settings. Like Oprah says, “America is just gonna love this movie!”. Yeah, they probably will.
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