War Horse

So, I've almost done it. I've watched/reviewed 8 of the 9 films nominated for Best Picture this year. I have purposely stayed away from all media sources and I have not read the list of winners yet before writing this review. Honestly, I did not want to see this movie and would not have done so if not for my attempt to watch all 9 movies. This just looked too predictable for my tastes however it somehow made it's way into a Best Picture nomination. This movie from Steven Spielberg has done quite well bringing in $133 million on a budget of $66 million. 

The movie is about a horse and his owner as they each go through different aspects of the First World War. 

The plot technique of using the horse to tie all of the otherwise random characters together was clever yet highly improbable. The horse served it's purpose well of tying together different aspects of the war. The movie was able to show how it affected civilians and soldiers on both sides of the war without getting to disconnected. I usually enjoy movies about WWI and especially WWII, however I tend to shy away from the movies that romanticize and play down the nitty gritty of these wars, which is what I was afraid of with this film. The movie was mostly romanticized, but it did get into some of the rather unpleasant things as well. Using the horse as a semi-narrator gave you something to hope for in the movie while viewing the different parts of the subject matter. Of course the plot was one where you were longing for the hero to win and persevere through insurmountable odds. While all of the different events were extremely improbable, it almost didn't matter because you were drawn into each of the different acts of the story. 

Most of the battle sequences were shot in perfect frame rate and resolution that I would expect of a war movie. This is with the exception of the eye-sore that was the farmhouse. I can see that Spielberg designed it with a few shots in mind, however it did not look natural and really jumped out at me. Other than these scenes, everything else looked on par with my knowledge of this time period. The score was overdone and tried to evoke too much emotion even though the story was doing a decent job and the score just became overkill. There were many cliches in the movie, including the opening sequence of an Indian wooden flute melody played over rolling shots of the landscape to set up the epic story Spielberg was about to portray. 

I'm quite impressed with the horse work they were able to accomplish in this film. I'm quite serious. There were some large scale animal sequences and it was completed in a wide frame and it was breathtaking. The horse and actors were also in the same frame instead of cutting between the two so that the actors don't have to be near the animals. I'm very impressed with the amount of time spent to get it right although of course there was some CGI at play as well however it was virtually indistinguishable. Each of the actors in all of the little acts of the story, were very likable and really tugged at your heart strings with their individual stories. 

In the end, the film was rather entertaining. It purposefully made things bittersweet just to get at you, which was more or less successful. It was an improbable heart-warming tale that encompassed animal loyalty, war, family bonds, friendship, love, and just basically every other moral imaginable. It was a nicely made big budget blockbuster movie. There was nothing extremely remarkable or unique about this movie that makes me agree with the Best Picture nomination (especially if Drive was nominated). While it was entertaining, it was still exactly as I predicted it would be. "Well, clearly you aren't going to be a jumping horse".