HIDALGO (DVD)

Director: Joe Johnson (October Sky, Jumanji, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer)
Starring: Viggo Mortenson, Zuliekha Robinson, Omar Sharif, Adam Alexi-Malle

Hidalgo was a surprisingly robust and enjoyable little Hollywood picture about a horse race in Arabia. In a nutshell: An American cowboy riding a tamed mustang beats a bevy of blueblood Arabian horses at their own game. I.e. The American everyman mutt beats foreign aristocracy. Yeah, that's one overdone theme if ever there was (Horatio Alger was writing this stuff 100 years ago), but it's still valuable. What's more this film had enough other interesting aspects (the cowboy's Sioux blood, the 3000 mile race across the desert itself) to overcome the basic theme. Unfortunately, the Hollywood studio execs also put in a silly love interest side story that only roughly fits in to the main plot. Fortunately Omar Sharif is interesting even as a silly Arabian Emir. This was a pretty darn decent popcorn flick.

Standouts: Solid acting and not as dumb as Hollywood usually behaves.
Blowouts: Still has some silly Hollywood conventions.

Grade: B-