Steven Spielberg’s version of War Horse is like an extended Sunday afternoon episode of Black Beauty gone mad via the first world war, just so you know, and although it made me cry this is no endorsement. I rarely cry in real life but have been known to howl in the cinema, even when I’m aware something isn’t much good. It’s as if my brain and tear ducts are entirely unconnected so while, in this instance, my brain was saying this is a mediocre film, prosaic, plodding, over-sugared and with nothing like the power or imagination of the stage play, the tears still plopped. I wish there was something I could do about it. Is there a lead available to somehow connect my brain to my tear ducts? From Maplins, say? It would be good if there was.
Based on the Michael Morpurgo novel which has already been adapted as that National Theatre play, our story begins in a paradisial, chocolate-boxy Devon as Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), a hard-drinking farmer, rashly bids for a thoroughbred horse at auction, just to spite his landlord (David Thewlis) and no matter that this blows his rent money. His long-suffering wife Rose (Emily Watson) is distraught. Ted was meant to bring home a big, clumping working horse at a low price. But their son, the earnest and earnestly handsome Albert (Jeremy Irvine), falls in love with the horse, calls it Joey and embarks on the seemingly impossible task of teaching him to plough.
Inevitably, boy and horse succeed, against all odds — even Rose tears up at this; there’s a thing — but the turnip crop is destroyed by rain so Ted, desperate for money in the face of eviction, sells Joey to the British army.
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