Title: War Horse
Year: 2011
Language: English, German
Country: USA
Genre: Drama, War
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers:
Lee Hall
Richard Curtis
Michael Morpurgo
Cast:
Jeremy Irvine
Peter Mullan
Emily Watson
Niels Arestrup
David Thewlis
Tom Hiddleston
Benedict Cumberbatch
Celine Buckens
Toby Kebbell
Patrick Kennedy
Leonard Carow
David Kross
Matt Milne
Robert Emms
Eddie Marsan
Liam Cunningham
David Dencik
Geoff Bell
Johnny Harris
Rating: 7/10

Saw Spielberg’s latest WWI epic film in the cinema, although I’m not qualified as an animal zealot, I have yet seriously raised any pets (the most intimate contact is two goldfishes once I had at home). But film-wise, it is an overall solid work from Spielberg, far from his best, but still a magnificent viewing occurrence.

All the elements packing up in the film are slightly deja-vu from Spielberg’s oeuvre, the different episodes through which our protagonist horse progresses are patchily distributed, particularly the one centers on the French girl and her grandfather (Celine Buckens is annoyingly snobbish in her over-fabricated role, namely the rolling down of a tear through her cheek scene is loathsomely designed, which is also dramatically underscored in the trailer), which backfires with an incongruously dreamed-up sentiment against the gruesomeness of the warfare.

The human race cast is generically on their routine route without any over-exposition, which escalates the horse Joey to distinguish itself as the default tearjerker here, and even though everything is fictional, I feel agonizing to witness animals to being coerced to labor heavily just to earn back some human tears, it is not a fair play as we could never procure any consensus from them.

I give the film a 7/10 despite all these said disconcerting factors, cinematically speaking, Janusz Kaminski’s fabulous cinematography (the final scene of the reunion of the solider and his family is picturesquely stunning) and John William’s enchanting score is marvelous in its own stake, but with regard to Mr. Spielberg, as long as I admire THE ADVENTURES OF TIN TIN 2011, WAR HORSE fails to convince all cinema aficionados that he is back on his auteurish path, only a merchandize vendor in the business.