War Horse

As we open with shots of the sweeping English countryside I won't lie I wasn't sure if I was watching the latest Spielberg film or fucking Heartbeat. Being English I don't really need reminding of what my fair green country looks like. Of course my friends across the ocean may need a visual accompaniment to aid their journey through pre-war England. Now I'm not going to hide the truth from you...... I fucking hate horses. To me they serve no purpose since the invention of the car aside from placing rather tiny men on them and jumping over fences. Again another fucking pointless pursuit. War Horse has received somewhat mixed reviews and like every other Spielberg film in the last 15 to 20 years I knew it was bound to be hit or miss. We will as ever come to that little conundrum shortly.

War Horse is the story of a farmers son called Albert (Jeremy Irvine) who through his drunken father ends up befriending a horse who he names Joey. Now I know it is in our nature to name our pets and I myself have 3 cats. However I've always found it strange that people give animals human names as I refer to mine as Fat Cat, Retard and the Slut. Anyway as always my digression leads somewhat astray. We have the usual tale developing as young man develops unhealthy relationship with animal and seems to ignore the fact that there are women around despite living in rural England. Anyhows as war breaks out Joey is sold to the cavalry. At this point I was rather fucking hoping that Joey was being sold for meat so this fucking boring shit could end. On the plus side at least war was coming and we all know Mr Spielberg can do war very well. Or so I fucking thought.

Our first taste of battle is a cavalry charge on an undefended German camp as Major Jamie Stewart leads his men across open land to defeat the hun. Unbeknown to him is the fact that the Germans have a large amount of gatling sitting in an adjacent woods. Were we to see the true horrors of war? Like fuck as almost the entire charge is mown down we see rider less horses jumping into the woods. It felt like the fucking Grand National! I know War Horse is a family film but for me WW1 was one of histories most brutal campaigns and I don't think you can ever shy away from that. Joey our ever awesome horse is captured and put to work for the Germans and as ever befriends all he meets. Fuck me this horse is like a politician. So Joey spends some time on the other side before running off and getting caught up in barb wire in the no mans land of the Somme. Now I don't know if any of you are aware of the battle of the Somme was one of the most brutal offensives of WW1 where over a million men lost their lives over very little land. Now a family friendly film has to tone it all down but this looked like the aftermath of a big muddy rugby match that was played in a studio.

War Horse is one of those films that if you love horses you may think is a brilliant piece of cinema. However as I said earlier I fucking hate the big lumbering  beasts and that's just how I found this turgid shite. I somehow doubt that WW1 was in anyway boring but this makes it look that way and there is no doubt in my mind that this will probably win awards but I fucking pray they're Rasberries and not golden statuettes. It's hard to believe that the man who gave us the horror of war in Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan could tone it down so much to please a family market. I've had a fucking enough of this shit now so I'm off.

Complete Fucking Tedium And Less Exciting Than A Chat With Your Boring Neighbour out of 5