Spielberg rides anti-war message in 'War Horse'

Here's an epic Steven Spielberg movie that could just as easily have been titled "Horsey Come Home."

"War Horse," based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel and the popular Broadway play inspired by it, recycles the plot of the 1943 classic "Lassie Come Home" - a beloved family animal becomes separated from its young owner, and it takes an epic journey for them to be reunited.

The Lassie comparison is extremely apt, because the horse in this story, Joey, seems to understand every word that his human friend Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) says.

Human/pet communication has been a long-standing tradition in family movies, and this is where Spielberg runs into a bit of identity crisis with "War Horse."

He wants this to be a bloodless, kid-friendly boy-and-his-horse epic at the same time that "War Horse" - as the title implies - is a war movie in which young lads get machine-gunned down, ripped by swords and blown to smithereens on the battlefields of World War I.

Spielberg turns grueling, sweeping shots of British troops dodging bombs, bullets and bloody mud puddles while rushing German strongholds - an homage to the 1930 classic war drama "All Quiet on the Western Front" - into tasteful slaughter, while later killing off a key character with a single line of dialogue.

So, "War Horse" gets stranded in the no man's land between a heartfelt, tear-jerker family film and a gritty, tear-jerker war movie.

Yet, this is a beautifully rendered motion picture photographed by Oscar-winning Columbia College grad Janusz Kaminski, and scored with emo-button-pushing music by Spielberg's longtime collaborator John Williams.

Here, that's more than enough to compensate for Spielberg's bumbling narrative schizophrenia.

Young Albert first sees Joey when his drunkard competitive father Ted (Peter Mullan) bids an outrageous price for the horse at auction.

Joey, a thoroughbred, is no workhorse, but if the animal can't plow the stony land around their rented house so a crop can grow, Ted, Albert and his mom (Emily Watson) will lose their home.

This is the first instance where we see that Joey's no ordinary horse, but an equine Hercules that can perform way more than 10 tasks.

When war breaks, Ted sells Joey to the army, specifically an honorable Capt. Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) who promises a weeping Albert he'll take good care of his steed.

After Nicholls is killed in battle (tastefully off-screen, of course), Joey goes through a succession of temporary protectors, including two German sibling deserters, a kindhearted cavalry officer, a sickly French girl (Celine Buckens) and her wise and wary grandfather (a galvanizing performance by French actor Niels Arestrup).

The dramatic highlight of "War Horse" isn't necessarily the expected reunion shot (burnished with gloriously flaming red skies a la "Gone With the Wind"), but a tense moment when a British and a German soldier call a nervous truce to free a suffering Joey from a barbed wire entanglement.

"You speak good English!" the Brit says.

"I speak English well," the German replies in the movie's funniest comeback.

In "War Horse," everyone speaks impeccable English. Even the French and the Germans.

So, Spielberg hardly intended "War Horse" to be saddled with the realism of a serious war movie like his Oscar-winning "Saving Private Ryan."

"War Horse" attacks the heart while ignoring the brain, and it works as emotional catharsis packing a strong anti-war message.

It almost redeems the cynical manipulations of last year's lame excuse for a hero horse bio-drama, "Secretariat."

“War Horse”

★ ★ ★

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Other: Opens at local theaters Sunday. A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 146 minutes