Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2012

A misguided but well-meaning (and a little drunk) farmer in Devon buys a thoroughbred racehorse when what he needed was a plow horse. His young son Albert bonds with the animal, named Joey, and even trains it to accept a harness in order to keep him. But when WWI breaks out, Joey is sold to an army major and begins an arduous odyssey, pressed into hauling everything from ambulances to cannon, for both sides. But the horse never forgets Albert, now older and a soldier. This painterly epic from Steven Spielberg is an unabashedly sentimental homage to John Ford and the kind of uplifting, Technicolor-saturated, dramatic crowd-pleasers that Hollywood made in the ’40s. The stunning battle scenes, by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, are some of the most gut-wrenching depictions ever of the pointless carnage that was the Great War; nearly, but not quite, as graphic as the director’s Saving Private Ryan. It’s a family film. Hippophiles will cringe. The characters are clearly defined, and the acting, by Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, Emily Watson and Tom Hiddleston, is superb throughout. This is good, old-fashioned movie magic.