War Horse

Unabashedly old-fashioned, War Horse tells the epic story of a boy (Jeremy Irvine’s Albert Narracott) and his faithful horse, Joey – with the onset of World War II inevitably separating the two and triggering an expansive tale revolving around Joey’s exploits on and off the battlefield. It’s obvious right from the get-go that filmmaker Steven Spielberg is looking to capturing the feel and tone of a classic Hollywood production, as the director has suffused the proceedings with a number of elements designed to hearken back to similarly-themed epics from the past – with, in particular, the lush visuals, grandiose score, and episodic narrative ranking high on the film’s list of old-school attributes. The handsomeness of the production is, in the film’s early stages, offset by the almost excessively deliberate pace, as Spielberg, working from Lee Hall and Richard Curtis’ screenplay, takes his time in allowing the narrative unfold to a degree that’s often nothing short of maddening – with the best and most pertinent example of this the long, tedious stretch involving Albert’s step-by-step training of Joey. And though there are a few decent sequences sprinkled here and there – eg Albert’s father (Peter Mullan’s Ted) reluctantly sells Joey to the war effort – War Horse‘s barely-passable atmosphere remains fairly consistent right up until a pivotal (and thoroughly engrossing) battle scene makes an appearance at around the halfway mark. The film subsequently becomes far more involving than one might’ve anticipated, as Spielberg places a growing emphasis on interludes of an impressively gripping nature (eg Joey, caught in barb wire, is assisted by two enemy soldiers working together). The narrative’s increasingly heartwrenching bent (eg it’s virtually impossible to sit through Joey and Albert’s inevitably reunion without experiencing a palpable lump in one’s throat) ensures that War Horse finishes on an almost incongruously positive note (especially when compared to its first half), and it is, as a result, finally impossible to label the movie as anything more than a sporadically electrifying yet terminally uneven (and overlong) piece of work.

*** out of ****