4/10
I won a couple of passes to an advance screening of Spielberg's latest, and I'm happy to not have paid for it. The story follows that of a horse born on the precipice of World War I - from being raised by a teenage farmhand named Albie, through his entry into the war via the British army, and subsequent owners, protectors and guardians that include two young German defectors, a French girl and her grandfather, a sympathetic horseman in the German army, and others. The film is of epic scope and epic length, but its simple story can't support of the weight of this blockbuster that was built around it. It failed to strike any emotional note whatsoever with me, and was just a big bore. The battle scenes felt slapdash and way too sanitized and the emotions were one-note and hammered home with an ending you could predict upon seeing the commercials. Spielberg also fails to imbue the horse itself with any true sense of personality or character, although characters in the movie all fall in love with it minutes after crossing its path, so I guess we were supposed to as well. Some nice-looking photography aside, there was little to enjoy here.
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