Review of Hidalgo (2004) by Miguel R — 10 Jul 2015

I don't know much about horses or horseriding. It's a relationship that I haven't been able to comprehend; I mean, I can understand a dog being man's best friend, but a horse seems to be friend, transport, and engine for tasks all in one. The servitude aspect of a horse has always made me a little uneasy, and pushing horses to race or dance or jump or do tricks for the sake of man's amusement gives me a reflexive cringe.

It is with that in mind that I watch Hidalgo, a movie about the most grueling horse race imaginable. I mean, how much of this race depends on the skill of the rider and not the strength of the horse itself? The very nature of this race means the deaths of a lot of horses, and like other animals in film, the death of a horse is worse than the death of a human being, because the horse is an innocent.

Hidalgo is a superhorse of a character. He manages to withstand injuries that would mean the immediate destruction of other horses, and still manages to defeat a leopard! A leopard! By the way, the subplot that involves those leopards may have been a distraction from the main race, but it wasn't a bad one.

The writing for the human characters isn't very deep, and the acting isn't as well. But this was one of the last films that Omar Sharif starred in. I'm glad to have seen this movie as tribute to my namesake.