Wonderful Movie

Excellent adaptation.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The tale of the extraordinary existence and times of Lucky , whose leading character, a marvelous horse , narrates the entire tale , being supplied with the minds, vocabularies and values of humans , (actually, it's the voice of Lukas Haas) . The beautiful scenery , photography and music enhance the story of Lucky's adventures . It starts in 1914 , when a German supply ship is en route to Namibia with a cargo of work horses when one of the captive horses gives birth to a foal . The colt is soon separated from his mother and arrives in a mining community . Lucky is a horse that was born in captivity but achieves his dream of running free with the help of an orphan stableboy (Chase Moore) . When war breaks out , the farm is bombed and the stable is abandoned , the lonely pony flees into a nearby South African desert , where empathizes an Oryx and a native girl who looks after him become his companions and teach him to survive .Enjoyable kiddie film about the adventurer life of a wonderful horse and the feats on the African desert . As the animal has to survive on his own , as the horse deals with a plucky orphaned boy who works at a stable , an antelope , befriends a native little girl and many other things . The scenes featuring the horses were breathtaking , colts racing over desert , a filly and pony trotting together , their sinewy legs moving together in smooth rhythm, elegant stallions rearing up; they were all absolutely beautiful . It is treated in good sense and high sensibility , though some moments results to be some boring and slow-moving , suffering from terminal hoof-in-mouth disease . The redundant voice-over and the sugary music score combine to enhance the glories of nature, one of which, after all, is silence . Exotic and colorful cinematography by Dan Laustsen (Silent Hill, Brotherhod of the wolf, Mimic) . Sensitive musical score with emotive leitmotif by Nicola Piovani , who had previously won an Academy Award for ¨Life is beautiful¨ . For the music lover, ¨Running Free¨ is an emotional ride in which the music all too well toys with the human soul. The music is so delicately composed, performed, and chosen for the movie that it is worth seeing just to enjoy the soundtrack. Written and produced by the French Jean Jacques Annaud , an expert on animal films such as ¨The bear¨ and ¨Two brothers¨ . Sergey Bodrov's first English language movie , who had formerly directed the notorious ¨Prisoner of the mountains ¨, and subsequently the spectacular ¨Nomad¨ and ¨Mongol¨ ; furthermore realized another picture with animal as ¨Bear's kiss¨. Rating : Acceptable and passable , worthwhile watching ; despite seems to be widely ignored . The flick will appeal to children and horse lovers , however the picture failed at box office . The bottom line is if you love animals at all, especially horses, then you will completely adore this film.

A rather nice boy and his horse picture. Or is it a horse and his boy? There are some great animal shots. (It must have been hell getting the horses to "act.") The film is shot in Namibia, the setting for the story, and there are some superb scenes. My only problem with the film was the rather absurd off camera narration by the horse. And even if they had to use this tired device, they could have chosen a better voice than the wimpy one they did. But all in all, it made for a pleasant enough evening and I imagine for a horse lover (which I am not) it would be sublime.

This is a lot like "Black Beauty", with the exception that it is narrated (by Lucas Haas) from the horse's perspective . It is entertaining, however there is nothing special / or that has not been seen before. Worth watching, but don't expect to be overcome with emotion, as it is also very predictable.