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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 33.33%
Worth A Look: 23.81%
Average: 27.62%
Pretty Bad: 8.57%
Total Crap: 6.67%
5 reviews, 75 user ratings
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| Hidalgo |
by Scott Weinberg
"Dances with Seabiscuit of Arabia...of the Rings"
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Man, there's something really frustrating about a movie that you really like...but only every fifteen minutes or so. Strewn throughout this overbaked and underwritten tale of equine adventure are several excellent sequences and winning moments. Perhaps an editor with a more merciless disposition could have tightened this one into something a bit more special.Hidalgo is like an old car that you really want to hold on to, but it's tough to feel devoted to a car that stalls out every 25 miles or so. Everything about the production design and the overall feel of Joe Johnston's latest film just reeks of quality. The endless vistas of infinite desert landscapes, the majestic sight of beautiful horses as they race across the plains, a few action sequences that quickly manage to get your heart pounding just a little...
You'll find a lot of this in Hidalgo. Unfortunately you'll also find a several resoundingly predictable plot threads, big handfuls of dialogue that would generously be described as 'theatrically overwrought', and big empty pauses in the action where one finds little else to do but shuffle around patiently or perhaps sneak a peek at their watch.
Screenwriter Paul Fusco (Young Guns, Thunderheart) has clearly tried to stuff a little too much into his saddlebags this time out, as Hidalgo is overladen with about three subplots too many, plot divergences that blatantly take the movie off course...and periodically right into Yawnsville.
With a plot synopsis best described as Dances with Seabiscuit of Arabia, Hidalgo tells the rather fanciful* 1890 tale of one Frank Hopkins, a burnt-out former war hero who, sick to death of America's treatment of its native citizens, ends up a drunken clown in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Circus. It's there that Hopkins earns the attention of a sheik, one who takes exception at the fact that Hopkins refers to his mixed-blood mustang as the world's fastest horse.
[*Disney seems intent on selling Hidalgo with that "Based on a True Story" millstone wrapped around its neck. I wouldn't believe much of that if I were you. This is a 'true story' inasmuch as Frank Hopkins really lived at one point. Beyond that...legends, tall tales and outright fabrication.]
Before you can say Redemption Tale, Hopkins is on his way to Saudi Arabia to participate in a thousand-mile horse race across the desert wastelands.
If it seems like this thing is plot-heavy already, keep in mind that I've only covered about 25% of it. It seems to be that Johnston (Jurassic Park 3) had more on his mind than just a simple adventure movie; his Hidalgo has big earnest patches of soul-searching and hand-wringing and tradition-bucking and pulpy stuff like that. The same kinda stuff that has 12-year-olds fidgeting in their seats because they came to see something with action.
To be fair, Hidalgo does offer a few truly exciting moments. One sequence (spoiled by now in the trailers) featuring a massive sandstorm is more than a little cool to behold, plus there are a handful of old-fashioned fist-fightin' brawls to keep things punchy, and of course the requisite 'race moments' that you'd expect to find in a movie that's supposed to be about, well, a big scary horse race.
The supporting cast is made up of solid performers across the board, although Omar Sharif stands out as the head Shiek. The performance ranges from sincerely intense to borderline goofy, but Omar's great to watch either way. Louise Lombard makes for a sexily slick femme fatale, while character actors like C. Thomas Howell and the great Malcolm McDowell pop up early for maybe two scenes apiece. As Hopkins, Viggo Mortensen takes another step towards Action Star Supreme. After being an admired character actor for many years, Mortensen now seems poised to take his Aragorn and Hopkins personae and perhaps bankroll it into something of Harrison Ford-like proportions. Good for Viggo, I say. We could really use a new Action Movie guy these days.This one's the very definition of a 3-star flick. There's absolutely some stuff in Hidalgo that's worthy of moviegoer attention, but it's also very intermittent in its delivery of the thrills. It's a movie that's easily worth recommending, but probably more as a weekend DVD rental than as a Big, Expensive Night Out At The Movies.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8659&reviewer=128
originally posted: 03/05/04 19:01:53
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This film is available for download or online viewing at CinemaNow.com For more in the CinemaNow.com series, click here.
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USA
05-Mar-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 03-Aug-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
18-Mar-2004
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