WAR HORSE Review

War Horse Review

By Darin Skaggs

“There are big days and there are small days.” This is a quote from Steven Spielberg’s latest film War Horse. And when I saw this film it was in fact a small day.

Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is a movie about a horse that goes to, yes you guessed it, war. The film starts out with the horse being born. Right then you know that this film will be about this horse, if you didn’t get it from the title. A boy named Albert played by Jeremy Irvin sees the horse and they bond. A few years pass and the horse is bought by the boy’s father. The father goes in to buy a horse that can plow the fields for them due to their finical trouble, but instead buys this horse because of its beauty. The horse then continues to bond with Albert and the names the horse Joey. He then trains Joey and they become closer. Unfortunately for Albert the father ends up selling the horse to the army. Joey’s journey leads him on many different adventures where he meets two young boys in the army, a little girl living with her Grandfather and a new young solider. This leads to a messy, oddly structured story that ultimately leads to no real emotional moments.

As always with Spielberg this films looks amazing. It has great sets and great looking battle sequences. One particular scene where Joey is running along on a battle field as explosions are going off around him, and like his other war films there are great war scenes with the humans as well. Another good thing about the film is the score by John Williams. It is soothing and an emotional score.

With such an emotional score you could think that it would be an emotional film, but it’s not. The horse travels along through the country and meets a bunch of different people in the war on both sides. The first one after Albert to get Joey is a new young solider that is ready for war. His story is not long and it is sad, but you do not get to know him and care about his character enough to have a real emotional pull on the reveal of his fate. This happens throughout the film. The characters Joey interacts with are briefly seen and we do not get to know them very well. The movie overall is just kind of sad. It is looking for you to care about the sad things that happen and really feel for them, but it doesn’t do that. Most of the film is just a bummer. There is no emotion pull to it at all.

There are scenes that work on an emotional scale like the bonding with the boy and the horse is well done and a scene where Joey stumbles on a farm owned by an old man and his granddaughter. In this scene the granddaughter attempts to teach Joey how to jump over a stick elevated off the ground. This scene is played for comedy and works very well. Another scene that works very well is when Joey gets wrapped around in barbwire after getting scared and freaking out. The way that scene is resolved is the type of well played emotional scenes that I wish the film had more of.

Near the ending of the film we see the boy again. He has joined the war in search for his horse. Now the scenes where the horse and the boy bond are great and work well, but I did not believe that this relationship was so close that the boy would risk his life by joining the army just to see the horse again. The ending, and most of the film, is filled with coincidences and lucky moments on both the boy and horse’s part. It pans out just right trying to leave you happy with how they resolve the story, but does not work on satisfying level.

War Horse is a sad, emotionless mess. It seemed that Steven Spielberg did not really care about the story so much and only focused on making another war film that looked good. Spielberg is one of my favorite directors but sadly this effort just left me careless, sad and not satisfied with the final product.