War Horse

War Horse is the film adapted from the stage play adapted from the children's book by Michael Morpurgo. It tells the story of the titular horse's (called Joey (although he later gets both French and German names too)) journey from a small Devon farm to the battlefields of the Somme via an ill-fated cavalry charge, a couple of German deserters, the care of the grand-daughter of a French jam-maker and finally a German artillery unit. And its the latest from a little-known director by the name of Steven Spielberg.

In many ways the film is a good fit for Spielberg, giving ample room for both his strengths and weaknesses. On the strengths side, the story falls somewhere between rambling and epic, with its shifting locations and series of characters being introduced who each get their moment in Joey's life, but Spielberg tells the story with verve and panache, allowing each of the characters some life whilst never getting distracted from the story. This allows the audience to buy into the film despite the main character being a horse.

He has also lost none of his ability for a beautifully framed shot - the sight of a young girl, standing in a doorway with the sunlight behind all shown through the reflection in the horse's eye is pretty close to the quintessentially Spielbergian shot. Also look out for the cavalry charge through a ripened corn-field, whilst Joey's eventual flight through no-man's land is a bravura piece of film-making and the most thrilling sequence of the film (and a early contender for scene of the year).

On the other hand, Spielberg's greatest weakness has long been a tendancy to excessive sentimentality and that really needed to be reigned in (pun fully intended) at times here. It kind of works in the early scenes in Devon, partly due to the performances of Jeremy Irvine, whose earnestness sells the difficult part of Albert (a naive young man who'll do anything for his horse), and the ever reliable Peter Mullan and Emily Watson as his parents. David Thewlis also provides good value as the comically villainous landlord. You can stomach this slightly romanticised rural idyll because you feel it is providing a contrast for what is to come.

Its when the film shifts to France and the idyll continues that you feel Spielberg is over-romanticising and over-sentimentalising. The period where Joey is being looked after by the plucky sick grand-daughter of French jam-maker Niels Arestrup  that this is at its most jarring. The war is only a few miles away and yet everything is so perfect - the strawberries couldn't be any redder, the farmhouse any more perfectly rustic, even when the war does intrude, the German soldiers seem more comic than genuinely threatening. The sin is compounded by that fact that in moments leading up to this, it has felt that Spielberg has been deliberately shielding our eyes (in one case literally, by the use of a windmill sail, in other cases by judicious cutting from machine guns to empty horses) from the reality of war in order to maintain this idyll.

From here we are catipulted into the full horrors of trench warfare and the film regains its footing. Albert is now in France fighting the war and there is a nicely underplayed subplot about his relationship with the landlord's son. Meanwhile, Toby Kebbell manages to bring humour and emotion together in a nice scene of a Brit and a German working together to free Joey from barbed wire. The touches here, athough a different style for a different war and different genre, remind you that this was the director who brought you the beach landings of Saving Private Ryan.

Overall - 7/10 Good but not great. Spielberg at his best and worst with beautifully images and storytelling let down by an overdose of sentiment and romanticism.