a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Joe Johnston.
Written by John Fusco.
Director of photography, Shelly Johnson.
Edited by Robert Dalva.
Music by James Newton Howard.
Production designer, Barry Robison.
Produced by Casey Silver.
Released by Touchstone Pictures.
136 minutes. Rated PG-13.
STARRING: Viggo Mortensen (Frank Hopkins), Zuleikha Robinson (Jazira), Omar Sharif (Sheikh Riyadh), Louise Lombard (Lady Anne Davenport), Adam Alexi-Malle (Aziz), Said Taghmaoui (Prince Bin Al Reeh), Silas Carson (Katib), C. Thomas Howell (Preston Webb) and J. K. Simmons (Buffalo Bill Cody).
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Hidalgo is just fine. Starring in his first post-Lord of the Rings role, Viggo Mortensen is just, well, fine. Omar Sharif, as a temperamental shiek… fine.
Better than the Mummy movies, but a far cry from the thrills of Indiana Jones, Joe Johnston’s new adventure film is a mildly amusing, entertaining adventure film that races across a lot of ground. I find myself with little to say about it because the film is full of fun and familiar action, but it has little that is original or meaningful to share.
The most interesting thing about the film is the Disney studio’s claim that it is “based on a true story” about the Old West legendary figure Frank T. Hopkins. Wild, implausible adventures follow … just the sort of story that the real Frank T. Hopkins would have been proud of. After all, the REAL Frank T. Hopkins has been exposed as a notorious liar, who never had a mustang named Hidalgo and never rode in any 3,000 mile race. In fact, the race that fills most of the film’s running time never even existed.
In this entirely too-tall tale, Frank T. Hopkins is a Native American who can “pass” as white (the way Anthony Hopkins didn’t pass as black in The Human Stain). He gets drunk to drown his woes over the fate of his people at Wounded Knee, and put his modest riding skills to work in a traveling show with a burnt-out Buffalo Bill, until he is persuaded to travel overseas and race in a 3,000 mile competition called “The Ocean of Fire.” He registers his mustang Hidalgo in the race, and they’re off to race the Arabs, much the same way that Tom Cruise was off to beat the Samurai at their own game in The Last Samurai. Along the way, he befriends a sheik (Sharif), battles a wicked barbarian, rescues a princess, nearly chokes to death on a fake-looking CGI sandstorm, demonstrates that he loves and cares about all cultures and peoples except those wicked, wicked Americans, and ambles along talking with his friendly and likeable horse.
The special effects are sufficient, and in one scene involving wild cats they’re sensational. Mortensen is soft-spoken (surprise!) and likeable, showing a more comical edge than he did in Rings. The desert scenes are sufficiently dusty and hot. The romance is a Hollywood fancy, and so is this friendly culture of Middle Eastern barbarians. And the film wraps up with some vague affirmation of spirituality… the Native American sort of spirituality wins out over the Muslim tradition. Why? How? Who knows. The film is so careful about being politically correct and inoffensive that it never has the guts to suggest much of anything except “Be Nice to Others and Especially to Horses.”
Oh, one more thing. There is one particularly villainous and reprehensible character in the film. And it is interesting to note that, while the film bends over backwards to respect and compliment the Native American culture and the Muslim characters, this conniving, duplicitous, arrogant, and murderous villain is identified as… yes, you guessed it… a Christian. Come on. After all of the hubbub of anti-Semitism in The Passion of the Christ, a film that did not make generalizations, here is a film that goes out of its way to make a bizarre and misleading generalization, and no one even raises an eyebrow.
So Hidalgo is, in the end, an entertaining adventure that should make for a fine, frivolous Friday night rental. But if Viggo Mortensen is going to grow as an actor after The Lord of the Rings, he’ll need to seek something more challenging than this. If Joe Johnston or Mike Fusco want to be taken seriously, they need to quit making films with such ridiculously acrobatic political correctness. And if Disney cares at all about its integrity (which has long been doubted), it would not claim that elaborate and egotistical fabrications are actually “true stories.”