Bridges and Maguire give spirited performances, with their characters forming a father and son bond that both men desperately needed. The near mythic meeting of Seabiscuit and War Admiral on Novemat Pimlico is an extension of the movie's overall theme Seabiscuit, the representative of underdog hopes and pioneering dreams, and War Admiral, the recipient of champion breeding and training, a product of assembly line thinking. The story should have felt cliched and by-the-numbers, but a funny thing happened: the film makers took a nearly forgotten moment in time and managed to invest it with immediacy and suspense. This mushrooms into a media circus as Howard tries to gain public favor in order to force Riddle to put his money where his mouth is. But despite the popularity the mustang and his team gains, they are seen as just a cheap novelty by the East Coast horse racing elite, led by Samuel Riddle, owner of the 1937 Triple Crown Winner War Admiral. It's not long before Seabiscuit becomes the `little horse who could,' gaining favor among the sporting fans on the West Coast. Howard, seeking a new business venture in horse racing, hires Smith as his horse trainer and Pollard as his jockey, and upon Smith's insistence, purchases the ill-tempered Seabiscuit. It's under these circumstances that the film's four main parties come together.
During this maelstrom of hopelessness, horse racing quickly gathers favoritism among those wishing to witness a spectacle in otherwise bleak times. The assembly line philosophy of business is starting to squelch independent spirit and people are looking for anything to help escape the dreary day-to-day of life.
It's the Depression, and times are hard on everyone. The story of `Seabiscuit' is actually the tale of four long shots: Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), a wealthy self-made man and natural salesmen who's suffered both personal and financial loss through the Depression, Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), an aging horse trainer unsure of his place in the world with the ending of the frontier, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), a short-tempered jockey with various handicaps against him, and Seabiscuit, an undersized mustang whose been mistreated his whole life. Goliath theme so thoroughly and effectively as `Seabiscuit' has. No other movie this summer has capitalized upon the David vs.
It's fitting that a film about underdogs giving it all they've got has been released among the standard summer action fare.
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