1%-5% of your purchase will help support the PTC.

Parents Television Council Reviews	Share |
PTC reviews aim to provide you with advanced information about an entertainment offering so that you can be the final arbiter of what you and  your family see.
Get new reviews sent to your inbox!

War Horse

By Christopher Gildemeister

Release Date: December 25, 2011

MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullen, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, Niels Arestrup

Recommended age: 13+

Overall PTC Traffic Light Rating: Yellow

Based on the children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo, War Horse follows the experiences of the title animal, Joey. Foaled in Devon, England, Joey is purchased at auction by Ted Narracott, a crippled and impoverished farmer. Joey is lovingly raised by Ted’s teenage son Albert, who despite Joey’s spirited, thoroughbred nature, teaches the horse to plow a field. But with the coming of World War I, Ted is forced to sell Joey, who experiences the war firsthand with a succession of masters: kindly British cavalry officer Captain Nicholls; frightened teenage German draftees Gunther and Friedrich; an elderly French winemaker and his enthusiastic granddaughter, Emilie; and finally, service as an artillery draft horse on the German front lines. Through it all, Albert’s love for Joey never wavers; and even after his own entrance to the Army, Albert vows to find Joey and bring him home.

There is some content parents should consider in War Horse. Early on, a despondent Ted threatens the horse with a shotgun, though Albert stops him. World War I is depicted throughout, with the deaths that attend war frequent; but the deaths themselves are rarely explicit and are never gory, being either implied or shown only at a distance. Among the violence shown are cavalry charges with men cut down by saber-wielding soldiers, artillery bombardments, the various events of trench warfare (charges across muddy no-man’s land and barbed wire into machine gun nests, grenades exploding, poison gas), and the execution of deserters; but such events are handled sensitively. While dead bodies of men and animals are seen (mostly at a distance), and while the warfare might frighten younger children, the film contains none of the gore present in most war movies. War Horse manages to convey the horrors of war with little graphic horror actually shown, though parents should also be aware that several sympathetic characters are killed in the war during the course of the movie, usually offscreen.

Apart from the wartime violence, there is no other content of concern. Sex is never an issue anywhere in the film. Various soldiers use a few mild profanities like “hell.” Albert’s father Ted buys Joey out of a prideful desire to defy his landlord; and Albert and his mother briefly discuss the fact that Ted drinks to excess.

Befitting its origins as a children’s book, good messages are sprinkled throughout War Horse. Ted’s drinking is explained by his own bad experiences in the Boer War, and Albert’s mother lectures him to be tolerant with his father, explaining that “he refused to be proud of having killed.” Those encountered on all sides of the war – British, French, and German alike – are depicted as merely human beings, some kind, some businesslike about waging war, and a few cruel.

Poetically photographed and underscored by John Williams’ magnificent music, War Horse is a quality family film which will likely appeal to both girls (who will enjoy the horse-centered story) and boys (who will enjoy the war story), and offers both an opportunity to learn a bit about a war nearly a century old in a relatively non-threatening way. Due to the film’s limited but frequent violence, the Parents Television Council does not recommend War Horse for viewers under age 13.

Family Movie Reviews

The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org

Have you seen this movie? Comment on this review, Click here!