Question: Why are people comparing these two movies?
Answer: Because they both contain horse races.
The way almost every single reviewer of Hidalgo mentions Seabiscuit makes me wonder if they've seen either film. Seabiscuit is a long, dull movie about a jockey, a trainer, and a horse owner who want to win horse races. The horse itself is only incidental. Hidalgo is the story of a cowboy and his horse. In this movie it's the race that's incidental. As Viggo Mortensen, who plays the cowboy Frank T. Hopkins, said so well in an interview here
I liked [Seabiscuit] and I think comparing movies is always a weird thing but since the name of the movie is the name of the horse (like this movie), I think in this story I do think you get to know the animal as an individual performer, as a character in a way that you didn't in Seabiscuit. They're different kinds of movies but the horse has a lot more personality. In Seabiscuit you're told that the horse has personality. You're told he's small and an underdog. It's other people talking about it. In this you can see Hidalgo's behavior, this horse.
I didn't like Seabiscuit much and thought Tobey Maguire's acting was very weak. Hidalgo, while not brilliant, was an enjoyable old-fashioned adventure that has a message that I think reviewers miss when they criticize how PC it is regarding the massacre of American Indians by government troops. The movie is not trying to make a political statement about American history but a personal one about Hopkins. He was half-Indian but had been denying it all his life until the message that he delivered helped spark the massacre and gave him a case of the guilts. It's a story about a man finally accepting who he is and doing something positive with his life because of it. That's just as inspiring as Seabiscuit's "little horse that could" tale.
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Article comments
1 - Chris Kent
I have not seen Hidalgo and most likely will not only because it looks like just about 100 other films of recent memory - FX straight out of The Mummy, a horse race straight out of Bite the Bullet (a brilliant film which undoubtedly inspired this oater opus). The review I read compared it mainly to The Last Samurai, whose protagonist was also suffering the guilt of having massacred Native Americans during the 19th century - evidently a popular theme these days. Both Tom and Viggio eventually come to terms with a tortured past, finding hope and redemption in an exotic, foreign land.
The only reason one could possibly compare Hidalgo to Seabiscuit is because they are both about horses and men overcoming troubled pasts upon their backs....
2 - Joe
Interesting symmetry between Shark's post and the background on Hildalgo.
3 - Shark
Joe, thanks for the link to the Outside artilcle. I'm a big fan of western history (bein' a Texan and all) and I wondered why I'd never heard of this guy.
Now I know.
I love the quote where Okla. writer Dary says "the history of the west is full of whoppers."
That's so true; until the last few decades, most western 'historians' merely drank from the stream others had pissed in, so to speak.
And Hollywood has never been shy when it comes to dipping into diseased wells and calling them 'facts'.
PS: And why is a movie more attractive if it is "based on a true story"?
4 - Chris Kent
And why is a movie more attractive if it is "based on a true story"?
Maybe because when the film turns out to be piss poor, viewers will leave the theaters and say, "Well, it was based on a true story, so I suppose it could have happened....."
Hidalgo appears to be such a minor, derivative film, maybe it lends the project an air of importance?
5 - Debbie
I guess I can see that technically Seabiscuit is also about men with troubled pasts, but in Seabiscuit the past is shown and then it seems to be done with, never to be discussed again and I don't see how they overcome it through the horse racing. In Hidalgo the past is very much an important part of the story. (I haven't seen The Last Samurai so I can't comment on it.)
Plus, Seabiscuit is named after the horse. Don't you think it should have been more about the horse than about the men?
I also agree that Hidalgo is fluff, but I think that Seabiscuit is a hollow shell and doesn't deserve any of the critical acclaim that it did. (I didn't like the book much either.)
6 - Chris Kent
Debbie, I haven't seen Hidalgo either and probably should not be making comments on it.
The film Seabiscuit was indeed a disappointment. PBS American Experience made a GREAT documentary on the story, which I think is superior to the film. I enjoyed the book, if only because I was not familiar with the story.
7 - Juan sebastian
I think that the 2 movie are amazing ,but an other movie of a race between hidalgo and seabiscuit is better ,
8 - Hello
I think both movies are great!!!!!!!!! I love them both!!!!!!!!!
9 - Me
Both movies rock!!! Never even heard of people comparing the two movies before. They're both two great movies with different story lines. Why the need to compare them?