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| An excessive sense of aestheticism either adorns or plagues the poster for Steven Spielberg's War Horse, depending on your viewpoint |
QUICK REVIEW:
A little family is facing the prospect of losing their home, if their expensively bought show horse doesn't plow a stony field. - It does! But is then, by necessity, sold as a war horse for World War I.
War Horse is a grandiose epic by Steven Spielberg (Jaws (1975)), which, however, it's hard to see who is for: The story of the boy's (Jeremy Irvin (A Night in Old Mexico (2013))) relationship with his horse seems to be tailored for older kids, but the film's war scenes are decidedly not suited for children.
War Horse starts well with Emily Watson's (Breaking the Waves (1996)) fine performance as the boy's stouthearted mother, but then the story continues along a sappy, powdered path, in which man after man, during the horrors of war, is profoundly touched by the beautiful horse. It punctured my interest in War Horse, which has a fine John Williams (Munich (2005)) score and a handsome cast, but which seems to me as a mediocre serving from an aging Spielberg, who might have simply grown too comfortable in his plush producer-director's chair to give us something with the teeth that he once could. (Admittedly, he saddled up in a different way the year after with the great Lincoln (2012).)
War Horse is an adaptation of English Michael Morpurgo's (The Nine Lives of Montezuma (1980)) same-titled 1982 novel by Lee Hall (Billy Elliott (2000)) and Richard Curtis (Notting Hill (1999))
Related reviews:
Steven Spielberg: Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves!
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock
Watch the picturesque trailer for the movie here
Cost: 66 mil. $
Box office: 177.6 mil. $
= Box office success
[War Horse was released December 25th to mostly good reviews. It made 79.8 mil. $ (45 % of the total gross) in North America and an impressive 16.4 mil. £ in the UK. It was 6 times Oscar-nominated, for Best Picture, Cinematography, Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Art Direction, winning none. Spielberg returned to the Oscars the year after with the much better Lincoln.]
What do you think of War Horse?
