War Horse: Review

This work was contributed by Freshman Carl Newmark

“There are big days and there are small days… which will it be?” War Horse: a

story of hope, love, and war through a horse’s eyes. It is directed by Steven Spielberg,

who is known for many movies including ET, Jurassic Park, and Jaws. John Williams,

known for the music of the Star Wars saga, wrote the score for this PG-13 DreamWorks

war drama that runs for 146 minutes. War Horse is based on a children’s novel by

Michael Morpurgo, and the stage play by Nick Stafford.

The film is about Joey the horse who is bought by the Narracotts, an English

farming family, to help plow the fields. Albert (Jeremy Irvine), the boy on the farm,

decides to train Joey and they develop a very strong relationship. When the Narracotts

sink into financial trouble, Joey is sold to the English military by Albert’s father Ted

Narracott (Peter Mullan). Captain James Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), who purchases

Joey, promises Albert that he will take care of him. In the war Joey makes friends with a

black horse named Topthorn. Joey and Topthorn are constantly captured in battle and

switch owners numerous times before the film is through. Meanwhile Albert joins the

military in an attempt to reunite with Joey. Joey travels from an English farm to a French

plot of land to fighting in the trenches (as pictured below) to tangled up in no-mans-land.

One of the most incredible things about this movie is how well the horses acted, but

it is clear that something is a little strange in a movie when the best acting is done by an

animal. It was also fun to see some of the actors perform together. Benedict Cumberbatch

(known for Sherlock) played a minor character as did David Thewlis (who played

Professor Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). The music was fantastic,

as most of John William’s compositions are, but was a little dramatic or overwhelming at

times. For me, the most magical scene in the film was when Joey was caught in barbed

wire in no-man’s-land, bother a German and an English soldier created a temporary truce

to help save him. This was a beautiful scene, even if it was not a believable event,

because it showed people willing to set aside their conflicts to save a helpless creature. In

the end, the Englishman takes Joey, as determined by the flip of a coin, and the soldiers

go back to their trenches to resume fighting.

The film is historically accurate, and because the horse is constantly switching

owners, he is also constantly switching sides of the war. This gives us a non-biased view

of the war’s events. The trench battles are incredibly well done, and very realistic, and

the economic struggles of the characters also are true to the time.

War Horse is predictable from the second that the DreamWorks title comes up on

the screen. Now this is not to say that there were not unexpected plot twists, but overall,

the film was very predictable. The film had its good parts, but they did not outweigh the

cheesy or over-dramatized scenes. This would not have been as big of a problem, but the

movie was almost two and a half hours long, and towards the end it got tedious. While

the music was incredible, it would often draw attention away from the film, and distract

the viewer from the interesting parts. Since the film was based on a children’s book, one

would think that the film would be child friendly, but a PG-13 film reduces the number

of children who can view it. If anything, you watch the movie for the incredible horse

actors and the extremely well done trench scenes, and people interested in either of these

would be the main audience to whom I would recommend the film. If you average the

positives and the negatives, you get a two and a half hour long, barely-above-average

film so I will give it 3.5/5 stars.

About The Author

Guest Contributor

See author's posts