Seabiscuit

There’s a great movie in Laura Hillenbrand’s book about the legendary racehorse; and someone (anyone!) besides writer and director Gary Ross might have made it. Fine performances by Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper fall victim to Ross’ screw-ups: the constant falsehoods in the script (whitewashed by narration from documentary veteran David McCullough); the leaden, self-important pacing; the nitwit comic relief from William H. Macy as a fictitious sportscaster; and so on. Worse yet, Ross inexcusably bungles the racing scenes, going slow-mo too often and at all the wrong times, cutting away after a race begins or before it ends, and patching in laughable close-ups of Maguire on a bobble-head hobby horse. You’re better off with the PBS documentary, which gets the story straight at barely one-third the length.