Summary: Joey, a strong, beautiful horse raised by the son of an endebted farmer, is sold to a soldier and from then, passes from hand to hand, changing owners through World War I.
NB: The plot is based on the 1982 children's novel War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, but this kind of story was initiated by Black Beauty, the 1877 novel by Anna Sewell that tells the story of a black horse who also keeps changing owners -only this is Black Beauty turned alezan and gone to war. The other main difference is that Black Beauty was meant to denounciate the bad treating of horses through different examples, and that in War Horse (the film) Joey is more of a guideline to the storytelling of war, even though Joey has some personnality to him.
Comment: This seems meant to make one tear (I cried a lot), but it's not realistic enough to be convincing. Let's say the ending (beginning and middle) is a bit Disney-like. I guess it's meant to be some sort of family movie, and its plot is too shallow and sentimental for my taste.
On a more positive side, some beautiful scenes and sceneries,
especially the charge through the woods and Joey's race through no-man's land later
on -I've always enjoyed watching a horse run. I also loved the scene where Emily appears for the first time, reflected in the eye of the horse.
The fact that Joey is made into an actual character without having him speak is great, though they turned him into some sort of a magical horse for that (he can understand German people discussing from quite a distance -he's english for the Queen's sake!). The horse acting is quite extraordinary, and used a dozen actor horses overall for Joey (see the No Animals Were Armed post).
Apparently this film is also a bit of a pastiche of other movies, maybe Joyeux Noël by Christian Carion for the episode of the wire entangled horse freeing, or some Gone in the Wind colors for the final scene. As I'm not a war movie specialist (war? noooo! *runs away crying*) I can't really think of many others, although I'm quite sure there're lots of references in it.
Not a bad film, very good actors, beautiful filming, but not exactly my cup of tea (maybe because I'm not fond of sentimental family movies, or perhaps because I don't drink tea). Still, you might want to watch it: the horses could get through to the Oscars.
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