Hidalgo

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)



Viggo Mortensen has swapped his kingdom for a horse. In this action adventure flick - a mix of revisionist and traditional Western relocated to the Middle East - the actor henceforth known as Aragorn has obviously thought it's high time to reinvent himself or to be condemned to a life of Lord of the Rings fan conventions.

So it's no more cross-country quests through unforgiving lands of sword-wielding enemies while pondering his ancestry and his destiny or becoming enchanted by unobtainable princesses for him.

No sirree.

Except, well, that's pretty much what Hidalgo spends its overlong, fitfully engaging two hours-plus doing. Just it has Mortensen as cowboy on the off-road to Damascus, riding his faithful titular steed in a 1000-year-old 5000km cross-country race across Saudi Arabia and Syria known as the "Ocean of Fire".

He and his small, fast and - yes - plucky mixed-breed titular mustang are up against Arabian steeds and riders of pure lineage.

His hirsute rivals' eyes crease when they call their Western competitor nasty things. Names like "infidel" and "cowboy" and "Marlboro Man" (no I made that last one up but there are some shots where you expect a surgeon's general warning to pop into the bottom of the frame).

Likewise Mortensen's character Frank T. Hopkins is a bitser - dad was a US Calvary scout, mum a Sioux. So there's a bit of New World mutt versus Old World thoroughbred conflict in the race. Especially with a scheming aristocratic Brit Lady Anne Davenport (Louise Lombard), who isn't just after the $US100,000 purse.

But the real front-runner is owned by Sheik Riyadh, played by veteran Sharif. Unfortunately, his imperious Bedouin leader and strict Muslim is amusingly sacrilegious. Not only does it exploit his Lawrence of Arabia cachet, it serves up a lot of old ham, surely an offence in a film in such an Islamic setting.

Anyway, it's all based on the story of the real Hopkins, who performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. That is self-mythologising big fibs really - and the script's embellishments have caused its own backlash stateside.

But just because Indiana Jones didn't help defeat the Nazis, we didn't enjoy him less.

And like Jones, Mortensen's Hopkins is an ancient sort of movie hero with a movie hero horse. It's hard to decide who's prettier. The nag is definitely funnier.

As well as stumbling from dune to dune, they get to do movie hero things like rescue the Sheik's kidnapped daughter who has her own personal stake in who wins the race.

That bit of derring-do makes the film peak early. And if its pace is off, what makes Hidalgo an uneven experience is how seriously it takes itself - Hopkins is wracked with guilt from his peripheral involvement in a massacre of Native Americans, possibly not the same one which set off Tom Cruise's cavalry guy in The Last Samurai, but close.

Along the way, it draws a very long bow in its mystical equestrian comparisons between the Sioux and the Bedouin.

It's a pity how the issues get in the way of Hidalgo's sense of adventure. With the engaging Mortensen up front, it's diverting enough. But it's the sort of film to leave you sympathetically saddlesore.


Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif

Director: Joe Johnston

Rating: M (violence)

Running time: 136 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas