Seabiscuit (UK)

Introduction
A film about a racehorse. Would not be an immediate choice for me. Still not my decision this time!

The Plot
Hmm - well, its about a racehorse, and a jockey, and an owner.
Its based on a series of real events in the 1920`s and 1930`s.
A rich man employs an elderly ex-cowboy to pick and train a racehorse for him, and chooses a not-that-great jockey to ride it.
The horse takes some understanding, as does the jockey before they can become any use on the race track.
Eventually the horse begins to shine through against the odds, and starts to get noticed by the nation during the depression.
This ends up with them wanting to race against the current top horse in the U.S. but this takes a lot of getting to.
Then there is another whole story line after that.

Its a little confusing to begin with. I found the chopping and changing between characters a little difficult to follow until it settled down. I wasn`t sure who was with who, and where they were going.

The Visuals/Audio
All pretty good. Video is fine. Nothing too special on the audio but then its not really SFX heavy film - some good thundering hooves though.

The Extras
There is the real footage of the original race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral, which is faithfully reproduce in the film.

A commentary that I haven`t watched/listened to.

A featurette on the making of, which is pretty reasonable - showing how they filmed some of the close in horse work.

Summary
An interesting film, with some reasonable extras. Its quite a long film at 2:36 but after the initial confusion I found the time went by quite quickly.
Horses aren`t really my thing,but this was a good film.

A movie about a racehorse may not sound appealing at all to most of the general population, however the fact that the movie stars Tobey "Spider-man" Maguire does add some appeal to the movie. Jeff Daniels is great in a supporting role and there is a small appearance by William H Macy. On the whole the movie is a sports movie but it has a lot of other genres mixed in and there is a lot of depth and quality in the movie that makes it go on for more than 2 hours. The movie is quite charming really and tells the story of seabiscuit, a broken down horse that no one wanted to own and how he turns from a failure to a success with the help of his Jockey, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire) and owner Jeff Daniels. The plot moves swiftly and the time flies by without any dull moments of boredom.

The visuals are very well done. They really give you a realistic feel of the time. Apart from the editiing, the costumes and sets also add to this feel. The actual dvd picture is steady, clear and sharp. No noticable problems. The sound is excellent especially during the races. The background score is very good.

The is a good audio commentary and a decent making of featurette on the disc. The highlight of the extras has to be the actual footage, including commentary of the actual race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. This reminded me that the movie I just saw is a true story.

This is a movie that more people need to see and get hold of. It wont win many awards but is brilliant all throughout. Tobey gives a great performance once again to show what a talented actor he is.