I watched Hidalgo on a four-hour layover in Dallas in 2004. I went in expecting nothing. I came out with sand in my teeth and a sudden urge to learn what a Bedouin endurance race was. I have watched it four more times since, including once with my dad, who used to ride Quarter Horses outside Tucson. He cried at the end. He will deny it.
The horse on screen: a real mustang with a real attitude
Hidalgo is played by a real mustang named T.J., a former Bureau of Land Management adoption horse who, by every account, was almost impossible on set. He bit a stunt rider. He broke loose during the ocean scenes. He tried to kick the second-unit director on day three. The scruffy, too-bony, slightly-angry look on his face is not a makeup decision. That is the horse being a horse. Compare him to the polished Arabians his owner mocks him next to in the opening. The difference is the whole movie in one shot.
The plot: 3,000 miles, one survivor, a race from 1893
Frank T. Hopkins, played by Viggo Mortensen with quiet, half-broken dignity, is a rider in the 1890 Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. A sheikh from Arabia invites him to compete in the Ocean of Fire, a 3,000-mile survival race. Hopkins takes his mustang because the prize money will save his friend, played by J.K. Simmons in a beard. The sheikh’s riders laugh at the mustang. They stop laughing around mile 400. The Hopi Nation has spent decades disputing Frank Hopkins’ story. The film picks a side. I am on Hopkins.
Best Points, Weaker Points, and Audience Fit
Best: Dean Semler’s cinematography. Mortensen on the horse. T.J. the mustang’s attitude. The James Newton Howard score.
Weaker: The romantic subplot with the sheikh’s runaway daughter does not land. The final stretch leans too heavily on voiceover. The villain’s motivation is thin.
Audience fit: Families with kids 8 and up, anyone who likes westerns without the revisionist guilt. Not great for under-7s in the second half.
Animal movie review Hidalgo: my verdict
★★★★☆. Hidalgo is not a perfect movie. It is a movie with a mustang at its center and a cowboy who respects him. If you want a Hidalgo review without the usual hedging, here is the truth: this is the best horse-versus-desert picture ever made and one of the better family-friendly animal movies of the 2000s. Rent it on the biggest screen you own.
Mostly yes. The violence is light and the main themes are friendship and endurance. Some sandstorm sequences get intense and the final stretch is grim, so I would not push it for kids under 8. My nephew watched at 9 and was fine. He talked about the horse for a week.
It is based on the claimed life of Frank T. Hopkins, a real cowboy who said he rode the 1890 Ocean of Fire in Arabia. The historical record on Hopkins is contested, and the Hopi Nation has publicly disputed parts of his story. The movie picks the Hopkins side.
The horse is played by a real mustang named T.J., formerly a Bureau of Land Management adoption horse with a reputation for being difficult on set. He was chosen partly because he had attitude. The horse does not want to be there. The character is the same.
It opened against a busy 2004 schedule and Disney barely marketed it. The film also did not win major awards, so it does not show up in decade retrospectives. It is the kind of movie people discover on cable ten years later and then evangelize.
