Though having plenty of strong moments, War Horse is a challenging film from a story-telling perspective. Based on a 1982 children’s novel, and a later stage play adaptation by the same name, it tells of the horrors of WWI, by following a horse named Joey, recruited to the front. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film carries his trademark compassionate highlighting of both the humane and horrific aspects of war. Spielberg’s extraordinary filmmaking talent should have rendered War Horse a young-adult war movie as powerful as Saving Private Ryan, yet it does not. Something is amiss. The plot follows the horse while the heart stays with the boy turned soldier, who first befriended and trained the horse back in England. And as the horse changes hands, allowing the audience to experience the war from both sides of the front, as well as from the civilian end, we never stay long enough with any of the characters to develop a strong bond. This is not to say that Spielberg doesn’t manage to maximize the emotional effect of every such encounter. Yet, after a while, it feels much like a train ride through a foreign landscape, that ultimately is not as enchanting as it was when one first boarded the train. Still, it’s a noteworthy film and a good way to introduce the dreadfulness of war in more realistic terms to a younger generation, that may believe war is as pleasurable as sees in a Captain America flick.