Tobey McGuire plays the principal jockey, Red Pollard, the hot-tempered, book-loving boy who becomes a surrogate son to Seabiscuit’s owner. As a teenager, the naturally gifted equestrian was sold to the racetrack by his destitute parents. He starts as an exercise trainer and stable boy before wearing the red and white uniform. Howard discovers him in Tijuana, the seamy, south-of-the-border utopia for gambling, drinking, and a myriad of vices outlawed in the Depression-weary States (“In an era when the world really needed a drink, you couldn't get one”).

Together, one hard-luck horse and three plucky human handlers serve as icons against the backdrop of the times. Like Roosevelt’s New Deal, the horse gave people something to believe in. Writer-director Ross interlaces the film with sonorous voiceovers (read by historian David McCullough), and black-and-white archival photographs of assembly lines and soup kitchens. In the climatic final race, Ross conveys the start with an announcer’s frenzied voice, and then fades into old photographs of families huddled around radios, reminding us of how people experienced the event. William H. Macy plays the wisecracking radio broadcaster, Tick-Tock McGlaughlin, a reminder that Seabiscuit’s reputation grew out of a relentless media strategy. Although Seabiscuit won speed records out West, he was considered too old to compete in the snooty racing venues of the East. So Howard goes on a whistle-stop campaign (not unlike Truman in 1948) and won the well wishes of the American public. The largest audience in history heard the race’s radio broadcast. While a fringe sport now, horse racing was eclipsed only by baseball in the national sports consciousness.

The film depicts the races with the expected amount of thrills, but cinematographer John Schwartzman heightens the tension by shooting breathtakingly close to the action. At times, it seems we are hovering between the horses’ ears, lifted above the track, or perched on a jockey’s shoulder. The film also gives a sense of the danger involved in a jockey’s position, clinging to those powerful animals as they race. Now and then jockeys shout insults as they tighten into a clump or try to punch each other out of the saddle. Real-life Hall of Fame jockey, Gary Stevens, plays George Woolf, the friend and sometime rival of Red, who rode Seabiscuit before thousands in Baltimore.