Rating of
3/4
..."Let err buck"...
MovieAddict - wrote on 07/26/13
Hidalgo is a heart-felt story about a man and his loyal feisty mustang who share an extraordinary bond. Viggo Mortensen's real-life endurance rider Frank T. Hopkins is a dispatch long distance rider for the government who without realizing the import of what he was doing, delivered the orders to have the Indians brutally massacred at Wounded Knee.
Racked with guilt for inadvertently betraying his own people, he winds up working for a Wild West show that gives him the money to live on but not the will. During one of the shows he is challenged by an Arab man (Omar Sharif) to enter the Ocean of Fire endurance race which he accepts. This race has been held every year for the last thousand years, and has only been open to the purest line of Arabian horses ever bred. Hopkins' horse, Hidalgo, a small mixed-breed mustang, is regarded as impure, and therefore shouldn't be in the race with purebred Arabian stallions.
During the race, Hopkins has to go through a storm of locust, survive a sandstorm, outrun people who wished his horse dead and him out of the race, and WIN with the other competitors not taking too kindly to a foreigner competing in the match.
The movie keeps your attention through the whole film and I was sad to see it end. The horses are beautiful, the costumes are great, the locations are awesome and the whole cast was magnificent! I’ll recommend this movie to animal lovers and dreamers of all ages.
