Hidalgo 

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A Celebration of Cowboy Justice, but Not the American Way:  Hidalgo
by Christian De Matteo

SOLID

      Until the Return of the King, Viggo Mortenson was known to me as my favorite onscreen Devil, after Return of the King as… well, The King.  Now… he’s known to me as… well, still the King and a damn good Satan.  But he is also a very good cowboy who could teach Jude Law a thing or two about doing a southern accent.

            Hidalgo is a well done story, much deeper than I expected, about a cowboy, disenchanted with his country after watching the slaughter at Wounded Knee, who turns, like so many of us, to an alcohol stupor rather than reality.  Soon though, an opportunity arises for him to do something worthwhile with the highly dangerous Ocean of Fire race across the sands of Arabia.

            The movie begins with flickering titles over a beautiful landscape, as though you were watching an old movie through an old projector.  And the film itself bares out this exact idea.  Paced like an old John Wayne movie, and told with the same Western zeal and pride, Hidalgo praises the Cowboy way and the frontier mentality.

            Well, parts anyhow.

            There’s a glaringly obvious omission of American pride in the film, particularly in the fact that Mortenson’s flag is his tribe’s symbol (the character is half Indian) and not the American flag.  While I certainly don’t think this is a sin of any kind, it is an interesting statement, and one obviously fully intended.

            The acting is well done, particularly by Viggo and Omar Shariff, the script is well written, but don’t go in expecting a non-stop actionfest.  Hidalgo is far from that.  It is an exciting biopic (it’s factuality currently under scrutiny, though) with great action sequences, beautiful horse shots and very good action with a very subtle and discreet love story.

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