War Horse

A moment of a colorful children's book, a moment of war hell and a moment of odyssey. Spielberg, with a relative bet on certainty, knows how to surprise and although the thoroughness or interconnectedness of individual episodes sometimes heavily stumbles, I still have to nod approvingly with a slight reservation. Considering how grand and consequently unfortunately slightly prolonged the film War Horse feels, it probably couldn't have been aimed more precisely. There are too many characters and moods here, and the plot either needed to be shortened by a third or stretched by an hour. The positive resonance resounds the loudest thanks to Williams' amazing main theme and a few touching moments, against which there is no defense. 70% (25/02/2012)

I have no choice but to write that Spielberg did not disappoint again. At first I was a bit worried, because there have already been a lot of films about horses and the space for filmmakers to tread with this subject is slowly shrinking, and I couldn't stand the extremely unlikeable and dull Irvine after a few scenes. Fortunately, we have the best director ever behind the camera. The story slowly gains momentum, Irvine disappears from the scene and the futility of war is depicted all the more strongly because Spielberg has already taken a slightly different view of those horrors and is no longer so focused on commercial success as he was before. War Horse is a beautiful film that should warm every viewer's heart, and the happy ending is delivered in a precisely measured way that manages to move without marring the overall picture and atmosphere. The taste of the story will stay on my tongue for a long time and it’s definitely a film I would like to repeat. (19/01/2013)

This is a pretty special movie for me and I must say that I really enjoyed it. Spielberg filmed this in his own way and it ended up so that every scene looks like a poster. Some scenes stand out incredibly. The ride through the battlefield is the most powerful scene of the movie, thanks to John Williams’ music too. Sometimes maybe half of the good feeling from the movie comes from the somebody sitting next to you. (27/02/2012)

A film about love, goodness and horses, in which the Great War also looks many times more pathetic and moralistic than in all of the anti-war pamphlets of the 1920s and 1930s. Paradoxically, this is not a problem at all - the main drawback of this captivating spectacle is Spielberg's absolute fondness for the surface. Everything inner and psychological disappears from the shots - everything is taken over by a rich visual arrangement. People and horses are explicitly props in the creator's professorial exhibition. Moments of emotion always and again come across the same thing - it's not the human (horse) story that impresses us, it's rather the respectable audiovisual construction, under which (unlike Steven's famous films) there is nothing at all, just a genre vacuum. This is simply not enough for a fairy tale, which War Horse is more than anything else. (20/02/2012)

A nostalgic look back to the heartiest, most melodramatic stage of cinematography. Film poetry for people who remember those times, maybe the last of its kind. Had it been twenty minutes shorter, it would have been one of Steven Spielberg’s best movies. That it’s one of his most personal films can be felt from every scene. (25/02/2012)