War Horse

(PG-13)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

***

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Director Steven Spielberg has bestowed on audiences everywhere “the perfect holiday gift,” said Richard Corliss in Time. Based on a popular children’s book that in turn inspired an award-winning stage production, War Horse is a “boldly emotional, nakedly heartfelt” film that “will leave only the stoniest hearts untouched.” Sure, its story “is unashamedly manipulative—even corny at times,” said Christopher Tookey in the London Daily Mail. A young man from rural England enlists in the military and journeys across Europe to find Joey, the horse he was forced to sell to the British cavalry when World War I broke out. Fortunately, the tale’s sentimentality is redeemed by “storytelling drive, fine acting, and gorgeous cinematography.” Spielberg still has a knack for capturing war on celluloid, delivering combat sequences that “easily rival those in Saving Private Ryan,” said Joe Marino in the London Telegraph. It’s obviously a challenge to show “something as brutal, terrible, and human as war” through the eyes of horses. But Spielberg is even able to pull off that trick “with honesty and authenticity.”