War Horse (12A)

HHH

Dir: Steven Spielberg

With: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson

Running time: 146 minutes

SOBBING in the cinema doesn't happen much in our cynical age, yet such was the reaction of some to Steven Spielberg's drama, War Horse, at a screening just before Christmas. And this was an event for supposedly flint-hearted media types.

Animal lovers especially should not expect to get through this adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel dry-eyed. On a teardrop-inducing scale, Spielberg's War Horse aims for a point somewhere between the orphaning of Bambi and Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys.

But does that mean this tale of a boy and his horse is up there with the greats – the Bambies, the Lassies, the Rings of Bright Water?

Alas, no. And it's not for want of trying. Indeed, trying too hard is War Horse's problem. Spielberg's films can be at their best when tugging on a string marked "heart", but they can also pull too forcefully.

When that happens – and here, with a script by Richard "Love Actually" Curtis and Lee "Billy Elliot" Hall it occasionally does – the warm glow of fellow feeling descends into sentimentality and then into outright gloopiness.

For that reason, Spielberg's Hollywood epic remains a distant second to Morpurgo's understated, yet endlessly moving, novel.

Even so, the director of ET and Close Encounters remains the consummate showman – as we see in the opening sequence, a sweeping, aerial shot of England's green and pleasant lands.

The cinematography by double Oscar winner Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) starts as it means to go on, in awe-inspiring style. Here is Eden, and though we do not know it yet, here comes war.

Look closer at this Devon idyll and hardship is not hard to find.

Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) is a farm lad who lives with his drunken father (Peter Mullan, blessedly playing against national stereotype by adopting a West Country burr), and saintly mother (Emily Watson). When dad buys a part thoroughbred horse at market to spite his landlord, the old soak doesn't know what to do with the creature except resent its presence.

Albert, however, forms an immediate bond with the horse. As far as the lad is concerned, Joey is his "brother", and the two will always be side by side.

War scuppers that notion, and Joey embarks on an odyssey that will take him through many circles of hell as shells rain down, exhaustion and illness set in, and death and suffering lie all around.

Joey, magnificent, handsome, heartbreaking Joey, has become the war horse of the title, a representative of millions of creatures pressed into service. By war's end, some eight million of them had perished, alongside an estimated 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians.

Spielberg doesn't tell the story of the war horses at the expense of charting the human suffering. One reflects the other, with man's inhumanity to man placed beside his decency towards these other wretched creatures, who would also rather be safe and warm at home.

There are many heroes here, spanning the age, class, nationality, and species divide, and Spielberg gives them their due.

It takes him an hour to get to France, far too long in the scheme of a film that's pushing on for two and a half hours. Though the relationship between Joey and Albert has long been established, the director hangs around in England, chiefly for one set-piece.

In the book, the event is dealt with succinctly; in the film it's an all bells and whistles affair, complete with cheering crowds and melodrama. This is Spielberg at his most needlessly overblown.

Once in France, he gets down to business proper. Even before the guns start, a feeling of dread begins to build. Every perilous situation in which Joey is placed adds to the sense of impending catastrophe.

War isn't depicted here in a Saving Private Ryan way. The gruesome details are kept in check. Make no mistake, however: this is an emotionally gruelling watch, perhaps more for adults than children, who tend to have an innate faith everything will turn out OK.

Spielberg keeps the twists and turns coming, with John Williams's score raising the emotional stakes still further. While one can put down the book for a bit, the film gives no such quarter. During one scene there was a lump in my throat the size of a house brick.

At other times the film becomes too much for other reasons, principally when the writers just can't resist adding another egg to the pudding.

So why put yourself through any of this, the stress, the sentimentality, the desire to take Richard Curtis's laptop away till he can rein in that unfortunate tendency towards tweeness?

Because no-one can craft an old-fashioned epic like Spielberg, because no-one can appeal to the heart over the head like Spielberg, and because despite its flaws, this is a spectacular piece of storytelling, a movie that genuinely does move.

l Interview with Jeremy Irvine – page 18.