War Horse (12A) (From The Northern Echo)

Film Review: War Horse (12A)

2:38pm Thursday 12th January 2012 in Reviews By Steve Pratt

Rating: 3/5

IT began life as a book, was turned into an acclaimed stage play and now Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse gallops across the big screen as an epic Steven Spielberg movie.

Click here to check showtimes for War Horse (12A)

But it’s long (146 minutes) and episodic, and botches the big emotional moments that have turned theatre audiences into weepy wrecks.

There is much to admire – Spielberg is the consummate film-maker and every shot is meticulously composed – but this feels too contrived and even occasionally dull.

At heart, it’s the simple story of a boy and a horse. When the horse, Joey, is taken away by the army to work on the battlefields in the First World War, the lad who’s raised him, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), vows to join up and find the nag.

Benedict Cumberbatch (enjoying life as the latest TV Sherlock and booked as the next Star Trek movie villain) and Tom Hiddlestone (Loki in Thor and the upcoming Avengers movie) turn up briefly as British officers to lead a spectacularly staged cavalry charge against the Germans.

There are dull episodes involving a sick (and irritating) girl and her grandfather hiding the runaway horse, and another incident involving two German brothers who get shot for desertion.

All they serve to do is keep Albert out of the picture for far too long.

It takes the scene where Joey, tangled in barbed wire after running through the battlefields, is cut free by a British soldier (a Geordie) and a German soldier to really bring the story to life and the audience to tears.

Spielberg has cast the movie to the hilt with such heavyweight performers as Peter Mullan and Emily Watson as Albert’s parents – he drinks, she worries – while newcomer Irvine acquits himself well enough as their son. The horses are pretty good actors too.