Movie Review - War Horse

War Horse (2011)

Starring Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis, and Niels Arestrup

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg is a guy who always tries to tug the emotional heartstrings.  There's nothing wrong with that and its an overarching characteristic of nearly all his movies.  In War Horse, though, this heartstring tugging is more like manipulative puppeteering, forcing the audience to feel a certain way even if the story doesn't naturally lead its audience down that road.  I found War Horse lovely to look at, but absolutely stilted in terms of storytelling and repetitive when in comes to telling the tale of the "miracle" titular horse known as Joey.

From the very outset, I totally understood the vibe that Spielberg was trying to invoke here.  There's a 1930's Rin Tin Tin childlike innocence on display in both visuals and story.  The opening act in which teen Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) gets a ragged looking horse from his father (Peter Mullan) and must train it to pull a giant trough through England's stony landscape felt like I was watching a old-time children's movie.  Not that there's a problem with Spielberg replicating his innocence of E.T. -- War Horse is, in fact, based on a children's book -- but after the opening act ends with Albert's father selling off Joey to save the family farm much to Albert and his mother's (Emily Watson) chagrin, the film falls into depressing episodic melodrama.  We watch as Joey exchanges hands multiple times throughout the battles of World War I causing surprising amounts of bad luck and harm to those who come in contact with him.  It all just becomes laughable rather than emotional.

I understand the old film vibe Spielberg is trying to achieve, but War Horse just feels awfully hollow and uncertain for whom the flick is made. We get these grand war scenes (which lack the violent brutality of Saving Private Ryan), but then they're interspersed with the silliness of moments like Joey literally "volunteering" himself to save his fellow horse from a deathly job on the battlefield or a young French girl -- one of Joey's "owners" -- hiding the horse in her room when the Germans invade the family farm.  There's a severe lack of balance and Spielberg is never able to figure out what type of movie he wants to display.

The film looks fine, but even on that front, there isn't anything overly special about the visuals.  Spielberg certainly culls lighting and lensing from the olden golden age of cinema, but it once again feels like a rehash of things we've seen before.  Granted, one could certainly say (and I did say in my review of it) that The Artist is a rehash of films that came before it, but it at least knew who its audience was which is the huge overarching problem of War Horse.  It's too simplistic for adults and too violent for kids and therefore finds itself wallowing in the middle of mediocrity.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+