War Horse Review

The ultimate horse opera! The mane event! Saddle up for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse!

Exuberant intro over, now let’s settle down and review the film. War Horse is based on the children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, and has previously (and currently) has enjoyed universal praise as a highly successful and innovative stage play. The narrative follows Joey, a horse that is bought to work on grouchy Peter Mullan’s farm. There he becomes the companion of Mullan’s chirpy sprog, Albert (Irvine) and together the pair manages to save the family farm from the grasp of unpleasant landlord David Thewlis. Shortly after, the First World War breaks out and Joey is shipped off to fight in France. There he will come to know several owners from all sides of the fighting – but will he ever meet his beloved Arthur again?Who can possibly say? The impressive cast also includes Emily Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Toby Kebbell and Niels Arstrup.

After the generally but not wholly positive response to The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Superfluous Subtitle, one imagines that War Horse is perhaps intended as the more heavyweight counterpart to the bearded one’s other family friendly film released in the latter part of this year. It’s a tricky balance to pull off – mixing heavyweight emotional heft with child-friendly wonder but Spielberg, as you might expect, mostly manages to do so. There are some rather hammy parts and subtlety is not always on the menu – which is perhaps a hangover from the theatrical origins of the film, but by and large War Horse ably caters for both children and adults.

There are some great things to say about the film. The horse is a uniquely cinematic animal – they look great charging across a screen – and Spielberg captures his equestrian thespians beautifully. Most of the actors give strong accounts of themselves. Hiddleston and the reliably good Watson are particularly strong. The battle scenes are scintillating (reminiscent, perhaps, of a gore-freeSaving Private Ryan) and there’s a curious interest in seeing the cavalry charge tactics at the start of the war superseded by hideous trench warfare by its end, and it’s pleasing to see both the British and the Germans humanised equally. Lastly, the emotional journey from utter distress when Joey enters ‘neigh’-man’s land in the final part of the film to cathartic joy at its conclusion is judged almost flawlessly.

Unfortunately, given the amount of characters in the film, it’s almost inevitable that a number of them pale in comparison to others. Mullan’s, for example, is denied the complexity required to make it work: the character’s often inscrutable actions and emotional distance are inadequately explained away with the clichéd ‘he saw bad things in the Boer War’ excuse. Likewise, Arestrup and newcomer Celine Buckens’ ever-so-French grandfather-granddaughter double act feels trite and somewhat stereotypical. It’s a wonder Gerard Depardieu doesn’t turn up at some point and offers to sell them some onions and cheese (that said Buckens still manages to be rather charming in her brief role). The film is also rather too long and there is an almost entirely unnecessary penultimate scene that does nothing except stretch the already strained believability of the film for a moment of serendipity.

Having said all that, War Horse still stands up as very decent family film, from which younger viewers may learn much about friendship, loss, trust and loyalty. Older viewers are likely to find much to enjoy too and everyone is advised to bring a tissue, or failing that, blinkers.

Empire Big Screen: Disney Showcase and Muppets Interview

Disney’s showcase at the Big Screen event/festival/shindig boasted an interesting selection of clips and footage from some interesting looking films. Shawn Levy was first to show up with some fun footage from the robot-boxing movie Real Steel (which I did get to see in order to prepare for the upcoming interview I did with Shawn Levy, but I’m embargoed from reviewing until October 7th). The clips we saw included one boxing match and a scene in which star Hugh Jackman and on-screen son Dakota Goyo discover an old robot quite by accident in a scrap yard. Levy was keen to stress the film’s focus on the father-son relationship and its classic underdog sports story rather than the robotic brutality. Real Steel looks like a lot of fun, but who knows how good it will be? WHO KNOWS?

We also got to see quite a bit of footage from John Carter (formerly of Mars), Disney’s new space-fantasy tour-de-force (or Avatar cash in, if we’re being cynical. Which we’re not!). The footage was introduced by Pixar big kahuna Andrew Stanton, who has played some sort of role (often writing and/or directing and/or producing) on pretty much every film the studio has churned out. John Carter is his first live action flick and is something of a labour of love, given that Stanton has wanted to bring the story to the screen since his childhood. We saw a burly-looking Taylor Kitsch as the titular John meeting some green aliens and doing a lot of jumping around, followed by what looked an awful lot like the coliseum scene in Star Wars Episode II. The CGI didn’t look quite finished, but given that Pixar have been doing photo-realistic visuals for some time now, I’m certain the finished article will look fine. Overall though, John Carter looks good fun. The trailer was improved no end by the classy inclusion of Peter Gabriel’s ‘My Body is a Cage’ as background music.

The last major bit of the showcase was Spielberg’s War Horse, which was introduced by star Jeremy Irvine. Irvine had been playing a small chorus part in a stage production during his audition before getting the part; the jump up to the big league proving as surprising to the actor as anyone else. The footage we saw seemed as stirring and care-laden as anything else Spielberg has done and should do justice to the well-loved book by Michael Morpurgo and the stage play.

They also showed the teaser at the end of Captain America for The Avengers, which is basically a lot of fast cuts between people talking in a grey steel room.

Disney’s showcase was followed by a live satellite link up with Kermit the Frog (Kermit the goddamn Frog!) and director James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords) in which they chatted about the new Muppets film, The Muppets. The interview was a lot of fun and was many people’s highlight of the weekend. The new film seems very much in the vein of classic Muppet’s comedy and we were treated to a sizable chunk which saw Jason Segel, Amy Adams (both perfectly suited to The Muppets) and their Muppet friend Walter tracking down Kermit in order to convince him to get the old gang back together in order to save the Muppet Theatre. The clip included a very sweet song by Kermit and boasted a handful of big laughs, even in its brief duration, which bodes exceedingly well for the film’s release. Kermit’s chat – in which he took several questions from the ecstatic audience – was interrupted by Fozzie Bear and, of course, Miss Piggy who threatened to spill the backstage beans on Jason Segel before the clip cut off. February cannot come soon enough.