War Horse review

So: a young boy (Albert) befriends an exotic, loyal creature (Joey), only to have it snatched cruelly away from him and find himself forced to get it back to where it belongs. If this bare-bones synopsis of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse reads remarkably like that of his 1982 masterpiece ET, the new trailer for War Horse also strongly suggests a similarly emotive a piece of work.

As John Williams’s score swells, swells and swells again to a partial voiceover, we see sylvan-toned snippets of Albert-Joey bonding, moody horse-staring-into-middle-distance shots, sweeping countryside vistas and epic-looking battle scenes. The trailer also suggests that Spielberg will give his four-legged star as much screentime as his bi-pedal co-stars, though of course trailers can be mightily misleading in all respects.

Whether it will all work or not remains to be seen, and may depend largely on how much Spielberg manages to rein in his more shamelessly schmaltzy tendencies.

But, as anyone who has seen Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and The Pacific (and lived) will testify, he knows his way around a battlefield better than any other current director. In Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, David Thewlis and Emily Watson he has four hugely talented stars (even if the first three are, perhaps tellingly, completely omitted from the trailer). And If he can coax a similar rapport between young Jeremy Irvine and equine pal to the one he achieved back in ’82 between Henry Thomas and designer Carlo Rambaldi’s long-necked creation, this adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s bestseller just might prove a massive hit.