Review of War Horse (2011) by Nedryerson1 — 04 Feb 2012

War Horse is the last movie of the Spielberg collection and as well as those the theme is very original and attractive. Although the story is very sentimental, it involves the Great War so we get the Spielberg that everyone loves. The plot starts a little bit weak, a boy gets a pet and the animal becomes his friend, but it is consolidated in the cruelest and meanest way, the family is broke and the war has started; the consequence is obviously the sale of the horse to the army. From this point it begins the process to reach the climax, and this is developed in a very strange form: the narrator of the story is the horse, but the animal does it using only images; in other words, everything is surrounded by the presence of the equine.

The melodramatic parts of the movie compensate its slow development, a great moment is when the young owner of the horse, that has joined the army, is on a trench and is forced to go fighting but he refuses to. Other special part is the one that the animal is trapped in wires, so two men go in order to help it, one is from England and the other from Germany, the amazing thing is that both became friends, but when the horse is released, they must return and fight against each other. The problem of the picture is the ending; the special effects cannot fix the cheap sentimentalism. Definitely Spielberg has done better.