War Horse
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: December 25, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 26, 2011
Spielberg has been ridiculed for shooting his actors from below against impossibly Spielbergian skies and a denouement that lays the love on copiously. But there's nothing simpleminded about how he uses movie magic, as a spell to dispel nihilism, to save us from the worst of ourselves by summoning up the best. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 26, 2011
There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It's a knockout. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 23, 2011
An entirely fitting Christmas Day release -- filled as it is with magic and talk of miracles -- and easily one of the best films of 2011. Read full review
100
New York PostKyle SmithDec 23, 2011
It's not a knock on Steven Spielberg to say he is history's finest maker of children's movies. His capacity to evoke simplicity, awe, beauty and unconditional love are his genius, and his vision of the children's story War Horse is a gorgeous, majestic fable about a boy who yearns to be reunited with his steed. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsDec 22, 2011
To create his disarmingly earnest film, Spielberg draws from the past. Its tone is humanistic and its technique classic. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 20, 2011
War Horse is a don't-miss Spielberg classic that reaches true perfection. Read full review
100
TimeRichard CorlissDec 19, 2011
In his most painterly film, Spielberg has appropriated the lavish visual palette of John Ford movies: "The Quiet Man" for the rural settings, "The Horse Soldiers" for the war scenes. Boldly emotional, nakedly heartfelt, War Horse will leave only the stoniest hearts untouched. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumDec 16, 2011
This is a beautifully built, classically framed movie, shot with the unshowy natural expressiveness of a John Ford Western by Spielberg's great cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 22, 2011
You may find yourself resisting this sentimental pageant of early-20th-century rural English life, replete with verdant fields, muddy tweeds and damp turnips, but my strong advice is to surrender. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 22, 2011
War Horse gets to you. It's one from the heart. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 21, 2011
War Horse is bold, not afraid of sentiment and lets out all the stops in magnificently staged action sequences. Its characters are clearly defined and strongly played by charismatic actors. Its message is a universal one. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 26, 2011
For all its borrowing from old Hollywood, I don't think War Horse is particularly nostalgic. The word I'd use is wistful. It's the largest, most lavish handful of wistfulness money can buy, and sometimes it's too much. Yet it's nice to know that even Steven Spielberg can still wish for something. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 26, 2011
War Horse takes time reaching its full emotional gallop with a late sequence combining man, beast and barbed wire. Yet it remains a technically magnificent ride throughout, and a checklist of visual influences from "All Quiet on the Western Front" to "Gone with the Wind." Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 22, 2011
Pieces of War Horse that may charm some eyes might well bore others to tears. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerJan 9, 2012
War Horse is bold, exquisite family filmmaking in the grandest Hollywood tradition. Be warned: whether you're a hippophile or not, it's a four-hankie moviegoing experience. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 22, 2011
It's very much an old-time moviegoing experience; the film could have been made in 1940, and that's a compliment. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 20, 2011
What's missing, then? There's no fiery central performance in the mix (the horse doesn't count), and once Emily Watson's hardscrabble mom is rotated out of the action, you yearn for an anchor. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsDec 26, 2011
While the PG-13 approach to the most brutally sustained war the world has ever known makes it suitable for mature children, some cynical adults may resent the tug of the reins. Me, I cried like a grandmother. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2011
War Horse's primary attraction is not the story of how it makes us feel but its impressive re-creation of the Great War's battlefields and some stunningly beautiful camerawork by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 22, 2011
War Horse will likely take its place alongside beloved family films. But that doesn't mean sitting through it is pure pleasure. It's a long slog at almost 2½ hours, and occasionally it resorts to obvious sentimentality. At times it's hard to escape the sense that we're watching "Saving Private Ryan"-meets-"The Black Stallion." Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 22, 2011
There are extraordinary and beautiful things in War Horse, enough of them to make the movie a pleasure and a worthwhile experience, though not enough to trick the eye or get you believing this movie hangs together. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 22, 2011
Spielberg has created an appropriate showcase for the magnificent creature that emerges, one that recalls the great movie horses of yore in a story guaranteed to pluck, grab and wring viewers' hearts, but thankfully not break them. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 22, 2011
War Horse, despite its excellences, is a supreme demonstration of a director phoning it in. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 22, 2011
Spielberg and his team - composer John Williams, as always, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, screenwriter Richard Curtis - never forget their mission: to pull at heart strings, jerk some tears. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 22, 2011
War Horse is the best film of the year. The year, unfortunately, is 1942. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 19, 2011
For certain movies, the adjectives "formulaic" and "predictable" are complimentary. War Horse is one of them. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 15, 2011
Whatever its missteps, this is a film that kids, middle-aged adults and grandparents can all see -- together or separately -- and get something out of in their own ways. There are precious few films that fit this description today and hats off to Spielberg for making one. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 26, 2011
Sumptuous and schmaltzy, Steven Spielberg's First World War drama, War Horse, is a strange beast of a film. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 22, 2011
Take the theatrical flourish away from this story, however, and the story's thinness becomes apparent. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 29, 2011
The result is a film that may stay in the mind's eye longer than it lingers in the heart. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyDec 26, 2011
Has the sweep of a classic John Ford movie, the sentiment of Frank Capra and a spirited steed named Joey who will steal your heart. The film itself is more difficult to love. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 22, 2011
While the Tony-winning play based on the same book creates unexpected impact through strikingly inventive puppetry, Spielberg is at a disadvantage in employing such a literal approach. Not even animals as beautiful as these can substitute for human ingenuity and imagination. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin ChangDec 15, 2011
This beautifully composed picture brings a robust physicality to tried-and-true source material, but falls short of the sustained narrative involvement and emotional drive its resolutely old-fashioned storytelling demands. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 26, 2011
It's almost a great war movie in one direction, and almost a piece of irredeemable cheese in the other, and there you have it. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderBen SachsDec 22, 2011
This may seem slick and sentimental, but beneath the surface is a film every bit as morbid as "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," which also used a nonhuman protagonist to contemplate human death on a mass scale. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 22, 2011
Spielberg's typically emotive storytelling only comes to the fore in a few of the film's pivotal action scenes, a couple of which are truly spectacular and remind us only all too well of what this film might have been. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJaime N. ChristleyDec 21, 2011
What ultimately hobbles War Horse is a two-pronged attack, with Spielberg's soft-sell producing an unfortunately dramatic flatness in almost every scene, while an 11th-hour scramble for picture-book catharsis doesn't seem to work either. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 27, 2011
War Horse is a bland, bizarrely unimaginative piece of work. [2 Jan. 2012, p.79]
40
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 20, 2011
Since he's (Spielberg) a director largely incapable of understatement, War Horse is served up with a self-aggrandizing, distracting surplus of Norman Rockwell backlighting, aerial landscape shots designed to out-swoop David Lean's, and an aggravated sense of doggone wonderment amplified by the director's dependence on John Williams's bombastic score. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineAmy NicholsonDec 16, 2011
Director Steven Spielberg doesn't have a steady grip on War Horse's careening tone, but he'll be damned if there's not 15 minutes in there for everyone. Read full review
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