Hidalgo Rating: Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Viggo Mortensen Zuleikha Robinson Omar Sharif

Hidalgo Reviews

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Good, old fashioned adventure in a faraway place
Last year, we had MASTER AND COMMANDER: FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, old-time adventure epics produced just for pure fun (and box office receipts, of course) and lacking any overt social or political correctness agendas. Now, we have HIDALGO.

Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) is one of the acts in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show on the basis of his reputation as the world's greatest cross-country horse racer. But Frank, the son of a U.S. Army scout and an Indian woman, is drinking himself out of a job, tortured by self-guilt over a tangential and relatively innocent association with the Army's massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee. Hopkins is challenged by an Arab sheik to participate in a grueling, 1000-year old horse race across the deserts of the Middle East. To redeem his self-esteem, Frank signs-on with his horse, Hidalgo, a mixed-breed Spanish mustang. Arriving in Arabia, Hopkins is despised by the locals for his infidel status, while Hidalgo's small size and lineage are held in contempt relative to the purebreds he's running against.

Omar Sharif appears as Sheik Riyadh, the Sheik of Sheiks whose own stallion is the favored entry in the race. (I guess Omar has been wandering the desert these past 42 years since appearing in a similar role in the sandblown epic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. He looks weathered.) Zuleika Robinson plays the sheik's daughter, Jazira, unnecessary to the plot except that she provides Frank with a Damsel in Distress to rescue, but little else.

HIDALGO is perhaps 15-20 minutes over-extended. The Jazira In Peril bit could've been left in the digital-editing trashcan quite handily without sacrificing too much of a story that's otherwise everything anybody could want in escapist entertainment for the whole family.

The real darling of the film is, of course, Hidalgo, who pluckily braves a host of perils to win the prize purse: sandstorm, concealed pit with sharpened stakes, attack leopards, sniper, horde of locusts, broiling sun, blistering heat, and human treachery. (Hmm. Sounds like my hometown on a daily basis.) By the movie's conclusion, you just want to take Hidalgo home with you and to hell with zoning ordinances.

Good, but not Great!
I got free tickets to an advance screening of Hidalgo, and decided not to pass it up. I can't say I was completly satified, but I wasn't disappointed about the movie either.

The story is about a half-Native American Cowboy named Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) who owns a formerly wild mustang named Hidalgo. The two of them had won many long-distance races in the United States, and Hidalgo had gotten the title "the fastest horse in the world". After making a poor decision to carry out orders given by the government, he ends up being the reason for the massacure of a group of Indians. After that, Frank had problems coping and ended up joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and being drunk most of the time.

One day while at the show, ambassadors from the Middle East came to a show and asked Buffalo Bill to remove the title of Worlds Fastest Horse from Hidalgo because they too had a horse with this title. It was decided that in order to keep the title, Frank Hobbs and Hidalgo would have to run one last 3000 mile horse race across a desert known as the "Ocean of Fire". It was agreed and then the race took place, with a few pit-stops to save a princess, fight rebels, and all that good stuff. I'm not going to give away the ending, but I will tell you that unlike most horse/animal movies, Hidalgo does not die at the end. He runs happily into the sunset!

The biggest problem I found with this movie was that it was about a 3000 mile horse race, but it seemed like the movie showed more of other stuff rather than racing. To better define this problem, I would say that the movie has a hard time showing the passage of time and distance. I think you will see what I mean when you see the movie.

The acting was okay. It was nothing academy award winning, but it was good enough. I can't get it out of my head though that Viggo Mortensen (Frank Hopkins) is not Arogorn from Lord of the Rings in this though, but maybe that's a personal problem. His lack of noticable eyebrows and blond hair was the biggest difference between the look of the two movies.

As for the special effects and camera work, the few special effects that were in this movie were okay, but again, were nothing great. For example, the dust storm looked very fake, but there was a scene with locus's swarming over that was very good with great camera work. I loved how the bugs kept on landing on the lens of the camera until you couldn't see anymore. I wonder if they used real bugs for that?

Overall, the movie was okay but nothing great. I wouldn't pay to see it again, but who needs to see a movie twice anyway. I guess everyone else will need to wait till March 5 for it to come out in regular theatres!

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