Hidalgo, d. Joe Johnston, st. Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif, a good looking horse, and others

Oh, the movie that might have been. I’m sure I’ll return to this theme a hundred times as I write up movies, but Americans (and maybe everyone else in the “West”) can’t have heroes anymore. By heroes I mean of the classical type, the heroes of Sophocles and Homer. As we all learned in our Greek drama classes, or by reading any number of grecophile writers and philosophers, heroes are defined by their flaws. It’s usually the familiar stuff, ambition, corruption, lost, hubris, and the like. In the classical Greek tragedies these flaws would produce the eventual breaking of the hero, but in our day (having lost our capacity for tragedy long before our capacity for heroes) the hero is the one to overcome his or her flaws to triumph.

Which brings us to the task at hand, Hidalgo. Its title is surprisingly honest, since the most believable and inspiring character in the movie is probably the titular mustang. Placed atop heroic Hidalgo is Frank T. Hopkins, played as well as I’m guessing he was allowed by Viggo Mortensen, who might want to make it easier on himself and just change his name to Aragorn. At some of the low points in this movie, I would try to figure out from behind which rock or dune Frodo might suddenly bound. Hopkins was, in fact, a real person, and one who apparently did a fair number of the things mentioned in the movie. He was an aggressive promoter of the wild mustang as a horse breed. He did win many an endurance race, the first one being a ride from Galveston, Texas to Rutland, Vermont. Sounds like a bitch to me, I’d get tired DRIVING to Rutland, Vermont from my home in Connecticut. Apparently Hopkins and a horse named Hidalgo did, in fact, win a 3,000 mile race across Arabia, beating the best horses and horse lines of Arabia in the process.

Adding to the mix is the rumor (fact? suspicion?) that Hopkins was, in fact, the son of an American cavalry officer and a Sioux woman. He did know growing up he spent time with Sioux and learned a great deal about mustangs from them. Apparently he also enjoyed more whiskey than was, strictly speaking, good for him. It would seem, then, that we have the makings of a good story and a good hero; mixed blood horseman atop mixed blood horse goes to find himself in the mystical and fiery hot east. Not bad, right? Our hero has some built in flaws, things like self doubt and drinking, and maybe he really mistreated a few girls back in the day, or never really knew if his mother loved him. Ah, but in these days of Homeland Security that’s not quite enough. If we’re going to be racing against Arabs, they had better be treacherous, as we know all Arabs are. Tribal too. Also violent, condescending, and smug, and to a one Muslim fanatics. (As an aside, for the rest of this review, when you read Arab, pronounce it AY-rab, in thick American jingoist, or substitute “towel head” or your preferred racial slur.) For example, Hopkins decided to run the race when asked, quite nicely it seems, by one Rau Rassmussen who made a fortune in the camel freighting business and lived in Aden. Hopkins agreed to race after some other people agreed to pick up the tab, and off he went. That certainly doesn’t sound very treacherous or Arab, so in the film the minion for the Sheik of Sheiks (where does one get this title?) comes to tell Hopkins that Arab honor has been affronted by the Hopkins/Hidalgo claim of being the greatest endurance riding team in the world. The minion is fat, officious Aziz (his fat fingers get more treacherous as the movie goes on, since he’s an Arab and all) and of course almost draws his jeweled sword on Hopkins who has to be defended by the American defender of honor, the Colt revolver. Thus the swords of the desert are made impotent by steely and superior American firepower.

Hopkins arrives in Arabia and quite soon is shocked to see a slave market. This in 1890 when black slavery was a vivid memory in the American mind. I would think precisely because of this, Hopkins unbelievably and pointlessly buys a black boy slave, who hangs out with Hopkins’ assigned (actually sentenced) helper and does nothing but smile on occasion and be black. With our hero now properly washed of the American sins of slavery (a truly pointless excursion in the film anyway, showing nothing but its bad conscience), we can get back to baiting Arabs. This time about their women. You know how they are with their women. The Sheik of Sheiks has a daughter, all of his sons are dead. Needless to say, she is Spunky, She Longs to be Free, She Cannot Abide Her Arranged Marriage, She Wishes To Show Her Face, and in this case she also rides horses. Inevitably, she likes Hidalgo, steals into Hopkins’ tent (one is reminded of the Old Testament when Abraham is “in his tent” and it’s unclear if this is a metaphor) where she is caught. Now, anyone who knows Arabs like we Americans don’t will know that something horrible will happen to our hero because of this, and what follows is a long sidetrack in which Hopkins redeems himself by going to retrieve the sheiks daughter from another Arab, even more treacherous and tribal, who has stolen her. What we learn during that trip is that Arabs are even more treacherous than we thought before, and that a good American cowboy with a Colt revolver can take on a whole city of them and come out on top, and with the girl.

One thinks that maybe the filmmakers felt once again a tinge of conscience after working so hard for Homeland Security, and thought they were laying it on a bit thick against the Arabs. This presents a problem, though, because of course Americans have to be good. What to do? How about a treacherous Brit? Solves a bunch of problems, doesn’t it? If the Arabs complain we can always say, “look at the evil white person!” The treacherous Brit turns out to be a youngish blond, loaded with money and class, also bent on winning the race with her mare. She’s not racing, of course, she’s carted around the desert and drinks a lot of tea. Mind you, I think treacherous British blonds are hot, and if you are one please email me, but of course we know that her treachery cannot possibly win. She even tries to seduce Frank, both with money and her hot bod, but naturally our cowboy returns to the hearty masculine company of Hidalgo, surviving the temptations of both female flesh and old world empire, leaving both Brit and mare headed to inevitable spinsterhood.

Despite all of this, until the last twenty minutes it’s not all that bad a movie. If you put your American Empire filters on (bring the same pair you use for the New York Times and CNN) there is a lot to like. Mortensen does a fabulous job considering the limitations of the writing. Omar Sharif takes the cardboard cutout character of the Sheik of Sheiks and breathes more depth into it than I would think possible. The horse if given a personality without turning him into Mr. Ed. Louise Lombard, who I don’t remember seeing in anything before, is a superior treacherous British blond. Still, this being Hollywood, we have to find a way to really screw things up with the ending. Does our hero learn something from the Arabs he’s racing against? Will he gain insight into the culture that is hosting him?

Of course not. The Arabs are even more treacherous at the end, Hopkins even kills on in pay of the treacherous Brit. Apparently in reality the Arabs were complimentary of both horse and rider after he won, but Homeland Security didn’t want that out there. Naturally, Hidalgo and Hopkins almost can’t make it, the Colt steel is loaded and pointed at Hidalgo’s head at one point, but what saves our hero? In a movie filled with so much race baiting, amazingly it’s the Sioux ancestors who intervene to help Hopkins and Hidalgo go on. No, I’m not making this up. Talk about hubris; you’d think the Sioux wouldn’t be on the hook when it’s time to defend the American Empire against the Arabs. I mean, we white people slaughtered them and all, America didn’t do them a good turn. Still, in the ends, there are the Sioux, dancing their ghost dance in the Syrian mirage (Homeland Security must like that, with the recently passed Syrian Accountability Act) to revive the cowboy and his horse. I would assume this is yet more bad conscience, but grotesquely misplaced. In a final twist, Hopkins presents the Sheik of Sheiks with Hopkins’ personal Colt revolver, a startling metaphor for the American arms industry that has dutifully provided the middle east with weapons used to kill each other in numbers far greater than their own technology would allow.

The strange thing is that I didn’t actually hate the movie. Maybe I liked the horse, or maybe I was just happy to be watching a movie. In any case, this is a rent only, and then only with some caveats. By the way, the reason I chose this movie was because traffic was bad and I couldn’t make a showing of Eternal Sunshine. That’s next week.