Film: Mustang sally forth

Hidalgo is insulting, imperialist Qaeda-fodder

By Anthony Allison

The print ads for Hidalgo proudly trumpet a quote whore's unlikely verdict on this Middle Eastern horse race saga: "It's Seabiscuit meets Lawrence of Arabia!" As if that regrettable comparison is actually something to crow about.

In fact, this plodding "adventure" flick mixes the worst aspects of The Last Samurai with embarrassingly outdated Arab caricatures who seem to have stepped right out of Rudolph Valentino's 1921 potboiler The Sheik.

Joe Johnston's drama is ostensibly based on the true story of former U.S. Cavalry dispatch rider Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen, totally out-acted by his equine co-star T.J.) who, in 1891, entered the titular mustang in the Ocean of Fire, a grueling endurance race across 3,000 miles of Arabian desert.

Johnston (Jurassic Park III) may have galloping delusions of grandeur: Not only did he and producer Casey Silver shoot part of their film in Ouarzazate, Morocco, where David Lean filmed Lawrence, they even dragged its star, Omar Sharif, out of retirement.

The 71-year-old Egyptian plays Hopkins' nemesis, horse breeder Sheikh Riyadh, who, having threatened to castrate Hopkins mid-movie, becomes more reasonable after Frank rescues his daughter, Jazira (newcomer Zuleikha Robinson) from the bad guys. "Blessings be upon thee," he purrs. "You too, pardner," drawls our cowpoke hero, before riding into the proverbial sunset.

Johnston sure is no Lean. He lacks the late British genius' sweeping vision, and his epic ambitions get hopelessly bogged down in the perilous quicksands of screenwriter John Fusco's politically incorrect stereotypes and formulaic plot.

To disguise the dullness, Johnston employs the cheesy old technique of speeding up the racing horse footage, and adds a laughably unreal, computer-generated sandstorm and swarm of locusts.

As we foist yet another piece of jingoistic twaddle on a hapless world, Hidalgo raises just one, rhetorical question: Why are we surprised, post-9/11, that many aggrieved fanatics in the Muslim world want to destroy Western civilization?