Gary Ross, the scenarist for Dave and writer-director of Pleasantville, tries to fashion another inspirational patriotic myth out of Laura Hillenbrand’s best seller about a famous racehorse of the mid-1930s and three broken men who find salvation through their association with the quirky equine. Maybe the magic will work for those who loved the book, but I found this film stultifyingly self-important and, despite the regularity with which it cuts to the chase, weirdly static. Jeff Bridges (a former auto tycoon), Chris Cooper (an ex-cowboy), and Tobey Maguire (a driven, lonely jockey) know how to hold the right poses, and I enjoyed William H. Macy as a hokey radio announcer who accompanies his spiels with sound effects. But Randy Newman’s lugubrious score proves that he’s become as much a movie hack as Philip Glass, and the narrowness of narrative focus thwarts the sprawl and scale required for a proper period epic. With Elizabeth Banks and Gary Stevens. PG-13, 140 min. (JR)