Saving Private Joey in No Man's Land

WAR HORSE (2011)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"War Horse" as a play is probably more magnificent and emotionally draining than as a film or a novel. The play itself used advanced, life-size puppets for the horses which would make for a stirring play. But for a movie that runs nearly two and a half hours, using real horses in the face of the reality and horror of war, it makes for a curiously remote and rather unrewarding experience thanks to cardboard and underwritten characters.

The film, set before and during World War I, begins in the English county of Devon where Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) is the farmboy who lives with his drunk father, Ted (Peter Mullan), and his tough mother, Rose (Emily Wat­son). Ted is to buy a horse at an auction and spends nearly thirty guineas on a colt! Rose is upset but it is Albert who sees potential in the striking mane of this new horse named Joey. Albert trains the animal to plough the land and save the farm from being bought by Lyons (David Thewlis), a greedy landowner. Before one can say that we are treading in "Babe" waters (and thank goodness the horse can't talk), World War I has begun and Ted sells the horse to the English Army, to be taken care of by a cavalry officer (Tom Hiddleston).

The story shifts from cavalry officers who use the horses to fight the Germans, to a little vignette involving two young German brothers who are officers who hide out in a farmhouse, to a young girl and her grandfather tending the horses, shifting back to the German Army who need the horses to tow their cannons, to the horse running in No Man's Land and getting injured by barbed wire, and so on. Hard to say which vignette works best but the one involving the German brothers is the shortest and most powerful. It ends with a scene that is remarkably strong and abrupt - a scene that would be more at home in "All Quiet on the Western Front" than in this film.

Director Steven Spielberg knows how to craft scenes of picturesque countrysides, soldiers fighting in the trenches and in cavalry formation as they charge to the German guns, and he knows how to direct horses! "War Horse," however, never quite establishes any real connection with its thin characters. Jeremy Irvine is as bland a farmboy as I have seen in a long time. Emily Watson occasionally elicits a smile when showing how proud she is of her son's strength. Peter Mullan merely looks angry or indifferent. The picture comes alive with Tom Hiddleston's sympathetic cavalry officer who works on drawings of the horse to send back to Albert. Aside from Hiddleston, I didn't feel any emotional attachment with any of the human characters, though certainly anyone would feel bad for the horses Joey and Tophorn, the latter a black stallion who befriends Joey.

Spielberg sentimentalizes Joey's plight - we feel his pain, his need to be close to Albert, and his exhaustion when dragged through miles and miles of mud while strapped to a cannon. But by the end of the film, with its dramatically red sunset hues and silhouettes that scream "Gone With the Wind," I didn't feel emotionally drained by the experience. I just felt emotionally empty.

Footnote: Kids, parents, veterinarians and PETA members should steer clear of this film - many horses die in battle, Tophorn dies from exhaustion, and Joey endures way too much pain.