Review : War Horse

Young Albert enlists to serve in World War I after his beloved horse is sold to the cavalry. Albert's hopeful journey takes him out of England and to the front lines as the war rages on.

Spielberg's take on this well known story, once and still is a well known musical. Now a film, I was pleased when I heard that this was coming out because being made into a film would benefit it terms of the production wise, the landscape of visual background, the opportunities to have more of everything, extending the possibilities that play couldn't. I hoped this would gain lots of advantages from that.

The screen is very different from the stage in so many ways, I think that this film reflects that, it also demonstrates the advantages of film because when you go to the cinema, you go for the experience. This is something that I didn't go and see in the cinema, but for the time of it's release it would of been and interesting film to subjectively look upon.

I don't care much for the story, or following the plot too much with this film, because I know that's not the main concentration point. I like watching the production of it and looking at what made this film so good. It's like when watch a dance live and you look at the foot work, it runs like that. It's a different observational point of perspective.

Production on this is notable for many things, the lighting, the sound, the post production that so much carefully went into it. It's all very well done. Spielberg's screenwriters are Lee Hall and Richard Curtis – formidable talents, but offering a Hollywoodised, genetically modified drama with an occasionally eccentric, grand sense of how people spoke at the time of the 1910's. "Thought you two had bottled out!" says one major to his brother officers, on the training ground. "As if!" another replies. Does make you think doesn't it. Is the dialogue in this so historically coversed?

I can only agree with those many others, for pointing out that Curtis, in co-writing the final Blackadder episode on TV, set on the Western Front, once created a genuinely brilliant and passionate first world war drama. This isn't in the same league. It has moments of poignancy, and Tom Hiddleston is convincing as the decent Captain Nicholls, who promises to look after Joey. But this version of War Horse is a pre-packaged brand, rather than a film. It's a 7/10 from me.

NEXT : The Fantastic Four