rsmv2you
Well-Known Member
Movie Review:
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
Hello, and welcome to the first and probably last movie review I will ever do.
By the way there are spoilers in this so just a little heads up.
Now, there is a lot to say about this movie. Firstly starting with Steven Spielberg. Now a lot of the time when it comes to a Spielberg movie you have about 5 things.
1. Amazing Sets
I have looked into how he does his movies and he will literally go over the top historically, and detail wise to make sets almost as if it was exactly what it was replicating. Granted money would never be a issue for him but he replicates places so well and the places he goes for his shots are brilliant.
2. Props and Costumes/Makeup/Outfits
Spielberg, again, is always accurate to the detail when going for this. He will go to the very tiny detail of a uniform or prob and make sure it is exact. For one in reference to this movie, I am surprised at a few of the props and MASSIVE amounts of ww1 German outfits they had. Also, where the hell did Spielberg pull a WW1 tank out of? If not the real thing, which he has done for some war movies, he makes damn good replicas.
3.Shots
Spielberg always knows the perfect angle, camera motion, and more notable, when to change to the next shot in sync with the music he plays for scenes. No one notices this because he does it so well. Also, in ANY war scene he does, he always finds the perfect path and or shot to do a scene.
4.Characters
Speilberg knows how to give a character personality, how to relate to them, and how to feel connected to them throughout his movies.
Now, I had a few problems with a few characters in this movie. Granted I find it hard to relate to a character who's accent is different from me, but I got past that for the majority part of this movie. Also, in some of Spielberg's movies he sometimes only shows the one side of the situation. Most notable in Schindler's List, but in this he captured both sides VERY WELL. Ill talk about this later but I'm just saying.
5. Storyline
Now usually you can predict Spielberg's story lines (for the most part) but when you do guess it, you become excited because you think "Oh is he gonna do this? Yes! He is" sort of aspect. Also, when he makes a movie based on true events he usually tries his best to take every aspect be it historical or logical emotional aspect into account. Sometimes he lacks one of these for the entertainment purposes of a movie but he pulled this off exceptionally well in this movie.
Now, onto the movie itself.
Now I just wanna make one note here. At the beginning of the movie I felt like I was watching the ending to where the red fern grows or something cause the amount of landscape shots followed by characters I dont even know yet got boring very fast, regardless of the landscape.
Now we have the main Character Albert Narracott. Who lives on a farm with his mother and father.
Movie starts with the main horse being born in a field with our main character watching. After the horse is born it skips ahead about, I dont know 12 years, lets say that cause I'm too lazy to check.
The father buys the horse at a auction for what seems to be a lot more money then the horse is worth. This puts the family in dept I guess you could say.
Tough times come along, land owner who is a ass threatens to take the land and the farm they live on. By the way thats what Spielberg loves to throw into his movies. Just that one person who is a ass. Then every time something bad happens to the ass in the movie you feel happy. (Hes quite good at doing this.)
Now, the father buys a horse, whose name comes to be a lot of things in the movie but is most knowable as "Joey" which Albert names him.
Basically the a good bit of the movie (or so it seems) is the boy training the horse and this goes on for quite a while. Now I wont go to every detail but all in all, they cant pay it off so the father sells the horse to a officer right as WW1 starts. (Now I tend to like the officer and he is intended to be likeable). Now when you have a person who appears to be the antagonist in a moment like this, (when the horse is sold to the officer) you want to hate him, but the officer makes actions to take care of the horse and if he survives the war, return the horse to him.
So on into the movie we get into the war scenario.
Now I just wanna say, Spielberg covered almost EVERY aspect and corner of WW1 from the front line point of view. This excludes the air war and the fighting in other areas.
Anyways, it follows the cavalry division of officers that are set to attack a camp of 600 Germans that they think will be taken over easily. Turns out, a whole other division was waiting in the woods out of sight.
Now this whole scene was done brilliantly. The charge, the attack was done very well, and like Spielberg, props were exact, Especially the machine guns.Anyways, the cavalry attacks and is mostly wiped out.
The officer we have been following is killed but our main horse lives. Also, another horse that comes to be Joeys best friend stays along with Joey for nearly all of the movie survives. This joey along with the other horse is then captured by the Germans and is put into the care of a young German solider.
This young German solider, who is 14 (WAY well below the age to be in the war, but this was also WAY to common in ww1) has another brother. So on into the movie one brother (the young one) is sent to the front while the other is put to watch the horse.
Long story short the brother that stays behind takes both horses gets his younger brother and they desert the army. Few hours later they are found and both shot. Joey and the other horse are left and our found by a little girl and her grandpa. This part kind of bored me cause I could not relate to either of them but the grandpa takes a major role near the end of the movie so just a note there, but long story short, germans come, the horses are then sent back into the army.
This results in Joey and the other horse to be work horses and pull heavy machinery. Now at this scene they pull up a giant german artillery cannon and like I have said,
Spielberg goes ALL out on props. This is and if not a exact replica of a WW1 German artillery canon.
Anyways, later in the movie the other horse becomes very tired and dies from exhaustion. Sad scene because Joey stays with the horse, regardless of a advancing english army. (Kinda skipping ahead but whatever).
Now as the english advance a WW1 tank comes onto the scene and I will say this. Spielberg will always be the top of anything when it comes to props for scenes.
Now, moving onto the trenches.(the horse dying happened a bit earlier but I wanted to get that out of the way).
Now, in Saving Private Ryan there was the D Day scene that made that movie memorable. In Band of Brothers the Battle of the Bugle and the Normandy Invasion was the memorable scenes. In The Pacific Iwo Jima was the memorable scene.
In this movie, the way he depicted Trench Warfare won that over for me.
This whole scene that goes on for a good 10 minutes really captures trench warfare in a very good nutshell.
I wanna take a quote that I heard from a WW1 survivor.
"If a man said he wasn't scared to go over the top (Which means go up onto the open field out of the trench), he was a damn liar."
Going onto this plain in between 2 trenches which is known as no mans land is in definition, hell on earth.
Picture it.
You are on a open field, literally at the equivalent of running directly at a firing squad. You are surrounded by barb wire and machine gun fire and the only cover is either the mud puddles or a mortar hole. The probably of surviving a charge was 1/3. Those were the odds. I dont know about you but I would be shit scared of those odds.
Anyways, we have our main character, Albert and his friend who was in at the beginning of the movie but I could care less to mention, on the front line. They both go into the charge and take out a machine gun and both survive the charge. However, Spielberg also covers the other #1 killer of war, Gas.
Few moments are surviving they are gassed and this results in I believe his friend dying but Albert living with burns on his face.
Meanwhile, there is the scene that I find to be the 1 problem with this movie but the one thing I love about this movie.
Our star horse joey runs through the german trenches and then runs out into the open field of no mans land and gets caught on a hell lot of barb wire. She then falls to the ground, and me thinking logically, "Wait, there is no way the horse could get out without a man taking his time to get the horse out and by god that would take a hell lot of men while under fire."
But, I was corrected by this scene, and I for one love the movie and hate the movie for this scene.
Now, at first glance of this one would think, "Hell what turn of events would cause this?"
Well, before I start I wanna take note of a event that happened in WW1 that makes the following scene actually possible.
(By the way this is a true event)
In WW1 on a Christmas eve night, in the trenches in the middle of Germany there was 2 trenches. Both sides not attacking but enjoying there Christmas Eve nights. The English trench was singing Christmas carols in there trench and shortly afterwards the Germans started singing Christmas carols in there trench. A while passed and the men from both sides came out of each of there trenches and both men, English, and German, shared a Christmas eve night, not as enemy's, but as human beings. They spent all night sharing there whiskey and talking to each other of there family's back home. The thing about this is because the Germans had but there kaiser during ww1. This man was not as much of a influence on the Germans as Hitler was so most Germans had very good morals. They were just serving there county as much and or as good of a cause as the English. Then the next morning, the man you were drinking and telling your thoughts to was now trying to kill you.
Anyways, in this scene joey who is in the middle of the field trapped in barb wire. A English comes from the trench and as he gets to the horse a german walks up to him with some wire cutters and both of them talk to each other (the german speaks some english) for a good few minutes as they release the horse. During this time both sides are not firing and they get the horse free. In the end whoever got the horse was decided by a coin toss. The Englishman get the horse. It, again, showed the bit of humanity that can be showed in war, and while the scene was too well product placed, it was still done exceptionally well.
Meanwhile joey is taken by the Englishman to a hospital where coincidentally Albert who took burns from the gas is. At this moment Albert cant see and they were about to shoot Joey due to his wounds but through a series of events Albert is reunited with joey.
Joey not being a officer horse is then sent off to auction and all the men in Alberts company pitch in a total of 29 pounds for the horse so he can buy Joey back at the auction. At the auction he is outbid but in the final moments the old man that I didn't talk about earlier buys the horse for 100 pounds. (See there was a whole good 20 minutes with the grandfather and the girl and he buys he horse to make the girl happy). In the end he ends up giving the horse back to Albert and long story short happy ending.
Now, I found this movie to be brilliantly well done as always. Spielberg always captures war movies perfectly and is always historically accurate to the best that he can. Now, in this movie, he captured the German and English point of views rather perfectly and excluding the beginning of the movie, the Germans had about as much air time as the English did.
So, I would give this movie a 9.3/10.
Reason for a 9.3 is because I felt that, like in most of Spielberg's movies, his scenes are too well done. The setting of some of the scenes is just done so well and it looks so good that is looks to good too be realistic. He did this quite a bit and brought it back a little.
If you read it all I love you and hope you enjoyed this review.
if you didn't read it, I pity you and you get no long story short since you didn't read.
Hope you enjoyed.
