This film - and indeed the whole "War Horse" story - is a sentimentally charged fountain of serendipitous events that require you to suspend any sense of realism and just let your senses find their own way through the next 2½ hours. We start with an auction where a young colt is bought by a poverty-stricken farmer (Peter Mullen). Now he was supposed to buy a working horse to help plough their inhospitable and rocky farm. Instead, he substantially overpays for a thoroughbred ("Joey") - an independently minded, athlete of an horse that has never been ridden, let alone dragged a plough around for a living! The son of the household, "Albert" (Jeremy Irvine) determines to try and befriend the horse and so creates an enduring bond. That, despite a separation forced on them by the atrocities of the Great War that sees "Joey" sold to Tom Hiddleston before being captured by the Bosche, befriended by a young girl and her grandfather and finally extricated from the carnage of no-man's land by a rare and poignant bit of Christmas Day-style co-operation. Of course, the story is far fetched but it is none the less effective for that. The story of the horse has a continuing thread all of it's own, but then so do each of the people whose life he touches. The ghastliness of war is writ large, as is the prevailing determination of Steven Spielberg to somehow humanise the inhumane - by using an equine actor. It's effective too, for the most part. Irvine is good looking, charming and well cast, as is Toby Kebbell who appears towards the end. The production is of the highest standard, the photography and effects impressive, and the dlalogue refreshingly allows the visuals to do most of the work - a clever and potent abridgement of Peter Morpurgo's original. There really is nothing not to like with this. It is splendid big screen cinema at it's best and well worth a cinema outing if you get a chance.
