War Horse is the latest film from Steven Spielberg and it focuses on the life of a horse from England around the time of World War I. It’s not doing so well at the box office right now, probably because it doesn’t have any big name stars and the subject matter seems confusing as to who is the target audience. I thought it was a good movie.

Jeremy Irvine plays a farm boy whose parents are struggling to make ends meet, so they buy a strong work horse to help them plow up some fields. The boy becomes very attached to the horse, and is heartbroken when his father sells him to a cavalry officer to ride against the Germans in World War I. When the horse is captured by Germans, it is put through a variety of abuses and changes hands several times during the war.

The star of this movie is the horse, and so you are presented with several short stories that go along with it, but everything is tied together. Each time the horse changes hands, we learn about the new owners and how the horse affected their lives, or death. I must admit that the horse itself turned in an amazing performance and none of it looked like CGI. Its handlers on this film deserve recognition for making the horse “act” so well.

The problem with this movie is that it’s partly a family-friendly story about a boy and a horse, and it’s partly a gritty story about the horrors of war. It goes from a triumphant scene of teaching a stubborn horse to plow a field to having the same horse being ridden in a charge where mounted cavalrymen slash the enemy with swords. I have had parents ask me if it was OK to take their kids to see this and I think the PG-13 rating is well earned. Don’t take anyone under 10 to this.

If you are expecting a big war movie like Saving Private Ryan, you might be disappointed. There is a huge battle sequence toward the end, and a couple of skirmishes in between, but for the most part this really isn’t an action movie. Instead, it takes a lot of time establishing the characters and setting, and really focuses on the drama and human element. Even though there are no A-list stars, you will still see some very good performances, but that is to be expected from a Spielberg movie.

Spielberg is currently competing with himself at the box office, and neither movie is doing well. He is credited as director for The Adventure of Tin Tin, which will probably do a lot better overseas than it will in the U.S. It came out the weekend before this movie, but both are being outplayed by Tom Cruise and Sherlock Holmes. I think War Horse is still worth seeing, but I don’t expect it to be a big hit.

Recommended: Yes