My Two Horse Cents

You can usually expect good things from a Steven Spielberg movie. And his 2011 live action effort, War Horse, was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, which certainly made it seem like this would be "one of the good ones."

Unfortunately, I found it Spielberg's worst in a long, long time.

War Horse is based on a novel that was, unlikely though it might seem from the content, adapted into a very successful stage play. Set during World War I, it follows the story of a horse, the young man who trains it, and the horse's subsequent conscription into the war. Spielberg was reportedly deeply moved by the play, and pushed to make this film adaptation.

The movie has many problems in my view, but the biggest is that it's too much like an anthology. The horse is the central character the movie tracks, and he passes through a half dozen "owners" in the course of the two-hour tale. And it's not that the story doesn't do everything it can to make that horse a character of its own -- it's just that that's not enough.

There are plenty of human characters that come and go in the horse's life, as the movie unfolds over years, but none of these people hang around long enough to make a lasting impact. Just when you might get caught up in one's story, the horse is moving on to new adventures. And so the overall tone of the film remains ponderously boring, for want of any real point of emotional access. Perhaps a real horse lover might feel differently... but then, a horse lover might struggle to watch the film for the hardships this horse (and others like him) endure in the film.

There are a few good actors in the film, including Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Tom Hiddleston, and Benedict Cumberbatch, but the structure of the film is such that none of them gets more than a few minutes of screen time to make any kind of impression. They're there and gone before you can care.

I was squirming from impatience long before the final act. Ultimately the only good thing I can point to about the film is the truly impressive job done by the horse trainers who worked on it. Even allowing for the luxury of multiple takes (which surely must have been required for many scenes), the precise things the trainers got real horses to do are quite impressive.

Still, that's hardly enough to hang an entire movie on. I'd certainly never want to watch any part of it again. In fact, I think I'd have to rate it a D-, which probably makes it the "worst Spielberg movie" I've ever seen. An unfortunate disappointment.