Walt Disney Studios
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Assessment in a Hurry: Feeling the need for steed? Pony up for this sweeping horse tale from director Steven Spielberg, which straddles the many years of Planet War I and stars Jeremy Irvine as a young soldier separated from his beloved horse. An old-fashioned tearjerker, this winning War Horse is properly worth the ride.
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The Larger Picture: Just in time for Christmas, Hollywood delivers yet another film about a horse—of course, of program. But War Horse has an remarkable pedigree, adapted from the bestselling novel as properly as the Tony Award-winning play, which employed lifestyle-dimension equine puppets. Director Spielberg, nevertheless, casts genuine animals (plus fine human actors), and the outcome is as magnificent as the titular bay-red beauty.
In rural England, teenaged Albert (Irvine) befriends a foal he names Joey. To avoid the evil, mustachioed landlord from taking their farm, Albert tames and trains the horse to plow the fields, but his dad (Peter Mullan) even now has to offer Joey—to the British cavalry.
The story expands beyond boy-and-horse bonding as global war marches to the fore. Vowing to track down Joey, Albert enlists in the army and quickly is hurled into fight. Meanwhile, Joey requires an remarkable journey, touching the lives of several men and women affected by war, which includes a British captain, German soldiers and a French jam-maker and his granddaughter.
Revisiting his regular theme of separation from home and loved ones, Spielberg gallops a line here between romanticism and grit—sort of an amalgam of his earlier operate. Critics may complain that battle scenes are essentially bloodless, but obviously, the director desires to make the film accessible to households and wrenchingly depicts horrors of war without having Saving Personal Ryan ranges of violence.
Functioning with director of photography Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg generates glorious widescreen compositions and orchestrates stirring sequences, notably Joey’s climactic sprint across a scarred battlefield tangled with barbed wire. With its epic storytelling, lush photography and color-saturated vistas, War Horse nods (and whinnies) to such classics as Nationwide Velvet, The Yearling and Gone With the Wind.
Even if your heart does not grow three sizes, your cockles will be warmed.
The 180—a Second Viewpoint: Longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams slathers the film with an emotional score, but the images are so expressive that much more understatement would have been a far better counterpoint.
Pictures: Films From the Future
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