Coming off the back of his career making work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo Mortensen is given a bona fida leading man role in this Hollywoodisation of a true story. He plays Frank T. Hopkins, an old school 1890s cowboy, who took his apparent shambles of a horse (Hidalgo to you, mate) to compete in a massive endurance test of a race in Arabia. A troubled self-loathing soul, Frank and his nag are the ultimate underdogs - he's a veteran of some of the worst atrocities in the fight against the Native Americans and his horse doesn't seem too inclined to exert himself too often. So when the challenge comes from Sheik Riyadh (Omar Sharif, porking it up to dangerous levels) to compete in the infamous Ocean of Fire, a deadly serious 3,000 miles race across the desert, you just know that old Frank doesn't stand a chance of winning the $100,000 prize money.
With a narrative so over the top that it makes the likes of Seabiscuit appear to be an exercise in cinematic restraint, Hidalgo doesn't exactly know an awful lot about moderation and subtlety. Far too long and basically plotted to be anything more than a curiosity, Hidalgo rarely moves with the grace displayed by its titular character, preferring to go the long way around the second hand themes and heavy duty moralising. True, Shelly Johnson's cinematography is the epitome of elegance itself and there are a couple of well judged action sequences, but Hidalgo never really gets out of the saddle. Younger viewers will probably get a kick out of it, though.
