Hidalgo (12A)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Zuleikha Robinson, Omar Sharif, Louise Lombard

When I first saw the trailer for Hidalgo, I thought 'great, an action movie'. Roping in a couple of people (namely Kate and her sister), off we went.

It was a bit slow to start with, providing a lot of backstory to wade through. I found this quite hard to cope with, but then again, I'm one of these people who has to get what the story is about within the first five minutes.

Basically, it's based on a true story set in 1890 (thank you Jo), which can be a bit off-putting to some people. It's about a man, Frank Hopkins, who is played by Mortensen (of LotR fame) and his horse. Which basically summarises the entire plot. Vaguely.

Hopkins has been challenged to a race to prove himself and his horse. Setting off from the fair that he was with, he travels to Arabia to take part not only for the money, but for the honour that accompanies it.

What he doesn't realise is that there's a conspiracy to 'fix' the race, which endangers his life from, until it was shown, who I would have thought was the least likely person. (And no, I'm not telling you who!)

As if a 3,000 mile suicide mission across the desert wasn't enough, he is also made to rescue the sheik's daughter in between it all. Do these people not believe in one thing at a time?

He rescues her, gets chased around the desert for a bit and wins the race, after nearly killing his horse. Why did he do that? I'm not sure, maybe he was hungry!

But that's not the end of it, oh no. He wins the race, so now he has a fortune. He goes back to his homeland and pays a lot of money to stop a load of horses being slaughtered. As the horses are being released, some of them decide they want out first and break the fences down, (which provoked some cracks from Kate at my expense, cheers mate!). I actually found that part funny because I could also imagine the horses humming the 'born free' song as they went, though I don't think it was intended to be as cheesy as it looked!

I was actually disappointed at this film as the trailer made it out to have more action in it that there was, which is scary because I hadn't thought myself much of an action fan. Not a bad film, but I think horse lovers would enjoy it the most.