Hidalgo

Touchstone Pictures presents a Casey Silver production

Starring: Viggo Mortensen and Omar Sharif

Directed by: Joe Johnston

Rating:***

Plot: A "true" story about a man named Frank Hopkins and his horse Hidalgo who race along the "ocean of fire". During this long ass race are hero and his horse run into a large group of angry Arabs and ticked off woman and quick sand and tigers and sand storms, I think you got the idea by now. This movie is pretty basic but it sure does bring you back to the old days when movies were all about adventure.

Acting: It's not all that surprising that this film is coming out so soon after the Oscars. Viggo Mortensen who I believe has the perfect bad guy name stars in the film. Now without a sword and a beard I personally think his acting talent is not all that high. He does ride along in this movie and I guess it works, he never really did haft to do any serious acting so its hard to judge his performance. Most of the movie he is either on a horse or shooting at people so whatever. The rest of the cast does their job well. The two females in the film really don't do all that much, there is the Arab princess who of course like are boy Hopkins, but of course to balance the movie out we have a nasty British woman whose only goal is to win. The sad thing about this movie is the fact that the horse really does out act all of the actors around it. Oh well the horses acting talent does not match those of the horse in Seabiscuit.

Directing/Writing: Well Hidalgo does have something going for it. The movie looks great its so crisp and clear I really digged the imaging of the movie. Otherwise this movie is a basic film where you really know what is coming. The film starts horribly opening in America somewhere, where Hopkins and Hidalgo win a race and then are appointed to send letters to Union troops who are fighting Indians. Hopkins then delivers some orders to a battalion where he witnesses an accident that turns into a slaughter. Basically, this movie pissed me off right from the start. I am very tired of this crap in movies about the bad old USA fighting the good a peaceful Indians. That is getting very boring and old, that is why I enjoyed The Missing so much, because it had some reality in it. Not every Indian was some nature loving peaceful person but whatever. It just seemed so biased and even racist to do that and then only minutes later show Arabs looking like either stupid or evil people. Beyond that though the movie has an adventure tone to it but its only problem is that audiences have not forgotten other famous action adventure films either. Hidalgo feels like it is a mix of Indiana Jones and The Mummy and Seabiscuit all rolled into a movie with some new scenes. I mean the scene where Hopkins and Hidalgo race away from a sand storm just resembled The Mummy too much to me. Towards the end the film things get better when Hopkins starts teaming up with Arabs to fight the bad Arabs and it starts moving along until this one scene that I couldn't help laugh in. Early in the film we find out Hopkins is half Indian. Later on he is about to die from the heat in the desert when he starts to sing like an Indian and then has a vision of Indian ghosts. It was suppose to be a spiritual moment in the film but I was just laughing my ass off. That is cleared up though with one great ending which left me half and half about the film. I do haft to say the movie does give you one of those feeling that you watching an old adventure movie and I was loving it.

Overall: It's a good ride one of those movies I guess the family can go see together even though there a lot of violence. It has its problems but it was still fun and I guess that is really all that matters in the end.