Movie Review: War Horse

Posted by MomOnMars on December 22, 2011

©DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC. ŠAll Rights Reserved

War Horse is rated PG-13. You may be tempted to take your younger children to see it because it looks like a sweeping, kind movie about a boy and his horse. Don’t.

In this case, believe the rating.

The movie is brutal. It’s about war. And death. Pain and suffering. Steven Spielberg makes sure that message gets through loud and clear. You’ll know it each time you wince in your seat wondering to yourself if this movie really comes from a children’s book.

I haven’t read the book, so I can’t speak to how true or not true to the original copy it might be. I can, however, tell you there will be reviewers who proclaim the movie to be majestic and epic.

The only epic part of it for me, however, was when it felt like an epic knock off of Tales of Manhattan. Except instead of a tail coat, the thread is a horse, and the stories aren’t completely unconnected. There is that pesky war going on in the background, after all.

There are moments when the movie really does grab you by the knuckles and pull you in simply because the filming is so beautiful and the horse is so spectacularly remarkable. And then it hits you in the face with a harsh backlash of  (what else) pain and suffering.

So many children and horses get killed in this film that I found it hard to focus on the heartwarming part of the story….the part where the horse overcomes unbearable odds (and pain and suffering) to make it to the end of the war.

The movie itself was two hours of intense.  If you want to go – make it a date night and leave the kids at home.

 

This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Debi’s Full Disclosure page or more information.

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  • hc

    I don’t agree with this review. There are a couple of war scenes but they aren’t brutal. They don’t show blood or focus on the death. The focus was on how well Joey was taken care of by each individual that came in contact with him and how much people fell in love with him. It has a great, heartwarming ending; however, me and my 6 year old did cry a few times during the movie when the horse was sold and when his horse friend died. There was a quick scene of a lot of horses that were dead after a battle but the camera quickly went over it. I told my boys that no horses were hurt during the movie and no people were hurt or injured. There is no nudity or cussing and that was a plus. This movie is fine for kids 7 and up. Good discussion on how to treat animals and how they depend on people to survive.

    • http://twitter.com/sabusykids Debi Pfitzenmaier

      I really appreciate your comments. There were plenty of people in the theater who seemed to enjoy the movie. I just found it too intense for my taste. The scene with the body flying up in the air after a bomb went off kind of put me over the edge, I guess. And all the dead bodies and horses laying on the ground. And shooting of the young boys. Even when there is no blood shown. It is just a matter of taste. I know people who hated Hugo, for example, and we adored that movie.

      I think I might have preferred War Horse on a smaller screen (as in TV). Maybe at the movie theater, it was just too big and that intensified the cruelty of war for me.