War Horse - Movie Review

      
        I thought I would start off my first review with a film I saw just recently called "War Horse", released on December 25, 2011 for America. The film tells the story of a boy by the name of Albert, who lives in England during the early 1900's. His father decides to purchase a horse at an auction for a high price. Albert starts to grow a connection with the horse overtime and names the horse "Joey". However, things go astray as the horse becomes a financial burden for the family and as an act of desperation, Albert's father decides to sell the horse to the British Army in preparation for WWI. Though Albert and Joey are separated, it highlights all of Joeys' time during the war through secondary characters and also captures WWI from 1914-1918. I won't go any further with the plot because I want to keep this review as spoiler free as possible but that's pretty much the basic plot structure of "War Horse".


    

        Overall, the film turns out pretty decent but not without some flaws. First off, I just want to say the the cinematography in "War Horse" is amazing and it's pretty apparent that Steven Spielberg put a lot of thought and effort into it. Some of the opening battle sequences capture the scope and action that WWI brought. I also think that showing the war through the lives of different characters seemed to work out well as it showed the audience both the English and German perspectives of the war.
        However, I do think they might have used too many of these characters to tell the story. I can see that Spielberg wanted to show his audience the whole course of the war but it is part of the reason why the film drags on for about two hours and 26 minutes (146 minutes total). If a  minor character were to die in the film, I really wouldn't care because of how many of these secondary characters were introduced. It helps span the whole period of WWI but it makes the film twice as long. If they decided to focus on the three major stories, then it would have made it more condensed and would include further character development. I also want to say that this film tries to pull at you're heartstrings and takes a somewhat family approach by showing the sufferings of certain characters and some of these are either a hit or miss.
        Overall, I found "War Horse" to be somewhat enjoyable in my opinion. If the film didn't have such a long run-time, a plot structure similar to other war related films, and cheesy attempts at making the audience cry, then I probably would have enjoyed it more. If you're willing to look past these problems, give "War Horse" a shot. If not, there are just as good, if not better, films in theaters now.

PROS

- Cinematography

- Historical Depiction

- Story Telling

- Setting

CONS

- Length

- Cheesy

- Too Many Characters

OVERALL SCORE

6.8/10

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-ColeTrain