Stars: Robert Redford, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Dianne Wiest, Sam Neill, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Cooper

Director: Robert Redford

Summary: Robert Redford directs this compelling story of 14-year-old Grace MacLean (Scarlett Johansson), who is emotionally and physically scarred after suffering a terrible accident while riding her prized horse, Pilgrim. Desperate to help her daughter, Grace's mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), a high-powered magazine editor, launches an all-out campaign to find a horse whisperer, someone with a unique gift for curing troubled horses. She learns of Tom Booker (Redford), who works to rebuild all the lives shattered by the accident. Love blossoms between the horseman and the uprooted sophisticate, resulting in unexpected consequences. The film was based on the popular novel by Nicholas Evans.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

Robert Redford's fifth feature as director, and the first self-directed film in which he has starred, The Horse Whispererfeatures him in a role he could have been born to play, Tom Booker, a gentle, thoughtful Montana rancher with a gift for healing "horses with people problems". When Grace MacLean (12-year-old Scarlett Johansson) suffers a shockingly well-staged riding accident her New York magazine editor mother drives daughter and horse, both carrying physical and emotional trauma, to the Booker farmstead. What unfolds is a 162-minute film in which little happens, yet which is lyrical, deeply moving and richly atmospheric. Inevitably both girl and horse start to heal, while the mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), who in the early scenes seems disconcertingly to have modelled her performance on Anne--The Weakest Link--Robinson, comes to reassess her life. The adulterous affair of Nicholas Evans' novel is reduced to temptation and treated with much greater maturity than in Scott Thomas' previous English-language film, The English Patient(1996). Indeed, The Horse Whispereris everything that Oscar winner was hailed as: an intimate sweeping romance in the tradition of David Lean, with superlative cinematography by Robert Richardson and a career-best musical score by Thomas Newman. Thematically echoing Redford's own multi-Oscar winning directorial debut, Ordinary People(1980), The Horse Whispereris one of the finest films of the 1990s.

On the DVD: Shot at 2.35:1 against very similar landscapes to Legends of the Fall(1994), The Horse Whispererhas a real epic visual sweep and the anamorphically enhanced image captures the endless landscapes and ever-changing skies well. However, there is more than expected grain, and some scenes show obvious compression artefacting. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is largely confined to the front three speakers, though creates some wonderfully atmospheric ambiences when called for; Thomas Newman's score is served particularly well in several key scenes. The extras are the American theatrical trailer and a music video for Allison Moorer's New Country ballad "A Soft Place to Fall", both crawling with compression artefacts. Also included are three "featurettes" on the production, Redford, and real-life "horse whisperer" Buck Brannaman, though each runs less than two minutes. The lack of any substantial extras is explained by Redford's comment in his "featurette" that wanting to know about how everything is done ruins the magic of the movies. --Gary S Dalkin

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Production Featurette, Robert Redford Featurette, Buck Brannaman Feature On Horse Training, Music Video By Allison Moore A Soft Place To Fall, Theatrical Trailer
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1998
Release Date:	August 20, 2001
Runtime:	162 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B E D 888320
Keywords:	Horse, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Closed Captioned, Whisperer
Genre:	Drama