Hidalgo -- 2004 -- PG-13

At its most basic, this is a film about a horse race. More deeply, though, it's about a fish out of water who is fighting for a great many things, and this race is simply a way to get them. It's really a good tale of trying to prove that you're more than what you appear.

Based on the life of Frank T. Hopkins, this film shows a snip of his life in the Wild West show of "Wild Bill" Hickock. There, it is claimed he has the greatest long distance racing horse in the world, which eventually draws the attention of those who race horses in Arabia in a 3,000 mile race across the desert. They ask that he either enter this race and prove his claim, or remove the title.

In addition, businessmen have been rounding up all the wild mustangs in order to sell them. This practice has been taking the horses away from the Indian tribes who can't afford the stiff prices these men have placed on the horses' heads. Frank negotiates with someone or another (no idea who it was or how they relate 'cause I thought it was Wild Bill) to get this one chief a horse, and this was agreed to.

Anyway, this all leads Frank to Arabia, where he gets jibed a lot for his little mustang and being an American "infidel." Really, the jibs got over the top after awhile, and I was ready to let the movie progress without them. We got the point. He is even given a guy as a helper who happened to be a criminal of some sort. Probably more of them messing with him.

The race section from beginning to end is overrun with little conflicts to give us something to stare at, since (let's face it) watching the actual race would be very boring. Gotta fill up the time with something. So we get a little mistaken activity, lots of conversation about this and that as it relates to horses and the race and history and people and family and...yeah, it goes on like that. The race is given a handful of obstacles, one of the more interesting being a big sandstorm.

But like with any story of this nature, you have a certain cliche pop up; the people who want to cheat to win. Here's the problem with this one. No one expects the "cowboy" to win. He is given no odds at winning. They don't even think he'll survive, and yet, they give him all kinds of trouble during the race. They don't think he'll win, but they'll do whatever it takes to make sure he doesn't. Kind of a weird mixed confidence thing. If they don't think he's going to win, why worry about him? There are quite a few instances where these people toss obstacles up in his path, which he overcomes (yay for him), but the obstacles seemed to have little point.

To a more specific oddity, we have at one point some pits that were placed in Frank's path in order to finish him off. Kind of extreme, really, but add to this that they want one specific horse to win, and this horse crosses this same path, and they knew it would. Since they want one to win and one to lose, it seems really risky to place deadly pits in the path of both. Naturally, the favored one passed unscathed, and Frank fell in creating yet anther obstacle.

As for characters, Frank is the star and he's a fairly well rounded guy. Everyone else is incidental to him and pretty well blends into the background. The shiek is fairly decent, and they make an attempt at giving his daughter some life, but for the most part, everyone else is interchangable. Even his assistant guy is only there for a handful of scenes, and not really enough to give him a lot of depth.

It makes a good action-adventure film, and the character of Frank is a far cry from when we saw Viggo as Aragorn, so that was interesting. If you let the nit-picking go, you've got a nice little flick that does have an emotionally satisfying ending to it. All my complaints just stop it from the realm of perfection, but it is worth having a look.