Spielberg is mindful of the family audience, but still captures the misery of trench combat.

This is always emotionally obvious, as well as consistently predictable. Something important has been lost in translation that cannot be compensated for by realism or pictorial beauty.

[Not] entirely satisfying … Somehow, though, the sum of the parts are more than the whole … It is a film of a kind we don't see any more, that it would be good to see more of.

War Horse finds it hard to say even something comforting about the Great War. Instead, it poses a question: is the Hollywood master, with his recent record in mind, starting to lose his touch?