The Horse Whisperer

Name: The Horse Whisperer
Genre: Drama, Romance, Western
Released: May 15, 1998
Duration: 170 min
Rating: 65
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Robert Redford

1998

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 27 Ratings

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6.3

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6.3	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 27 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: May 15, 1998 | PG-13

Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas, Robert Redford

Summary: After her daughter is injured in a horseback riding accident, a sophisticated New York woman (Thomas) desperately seeks the help of a Montana horse whisperer (Redford) to help her daughter and the horse recover from the trauma.

Director: Robert Redford

Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Western

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 170 min

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Critic Reviews

Joshua Klein

With solid, stately acting, and landscapes that could convert atheists, The Horse Whisperer tugs heartstrings without seeming self-conscious. Read full review

James Berardinelli

A film as rich in its visual presentation as it is in its emotional resonance. Read full review

Michael O'Sullivan

A handsome and effective-if over-long-tear-jerker about thwarted love between grown-ups who should know better. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine Maitland McDonagh

Curl your cynical lip if you want, but there's a place for heartwarming, life-affirming, even weepy dramas, and Robert Redford brings the best-selling novel about a traumatized teen and her wounded horse to the screen with dignity and restraint. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Robert Redford, who for the first time stars in a movie he's also directed, has taken this soap opera material and treated it like something inscribed on yak vellum by the Dalai Lama. Read full review

Ruthe Stein

It says something about this movie that Redford is at his most compelling playing opposite a nag. Read full review

Jeff Giles

It's punishingly dull for fully half of its two hours and 45 minutes. Read full review

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User Reviews

amheretojudge

Aug 28, 2018

a poignant tale in context of the methodology..

The Horse Whisperer The Horse Whisperer is a character driven drama about an unknown personality that enters into a dysfunctional family at a point of crisis to save their horse and ends up saving the family. Not only is the premise familiara poignant tale in context of the methodology..

The Horse Whisperer

The Horse Whisperer is a character driven drama about an unknown personality that enters into a dysfunctional family at a point of crisis to save their horse and ends up saving the family. Not only is the premise familiar but is rubbed plenty of times by the makers in every possible angle which then would require this tale to visit newer territories which it fails to do so. Addition to that, ticking for around 170 minutes the makers are milking their way down in and chews too much for the audience to enjoy its appetite. The narrative is daft at certain point with sloppy writing and loosely edited final cut that is more questionable than ever. The subplots are cheesy and brimmed with seen-this-seen-that conflicts with one dimensional side characters that extracts the heat from the soul. It is short on technical aspects like background score, sound department and camera work that every now and then goes into slow motion that isn't justified at all in here. With beautiful cinematography, stunning visuals, live locations and bright colors, it is utterly pleasing for the western genre fans in each frame. The adaptation could have been a lot better and a lot shorter for the audience can predict and finds themselves waiting for the makers to attain a closure. Redford's world seems self-obsessed a lot for it to offer room to any of the characters to factor in effectively. Redford is enjoying a bit much to breed sincerity with Johansson's amateur performance and Neil's undercooked one, Thomas is the only one that stands alone delivering through each frame. Visually aesthetic and manipulative emotions that it draws out from the audience are the only high points of this sinking feature. The Horse Whisperer is a poignant tale in context of the methodology that it approaches to and not its ideology.… Expand

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BridgetWalters

Aug 16, 2019

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. In my early days I worked for one of the top Quarter Horse trainers in America, and for all intensive purposes of horsemanship, he was the essence of the trainer in the book. It was my favorite book for the longest time, and I was very excited when I heard that it was being made into a film. Not only was it being made into a film, but it would also star Robert Redford who I thought embodied everything the cowboy Tom Booker should look and act like. My initial disappointment came in the first moments we see Tom Booker in the film, and even in the trailer. He walks up with new gloves, clean hat, clean chaps, and a shirt with creases still in the collar. This man is a born horseman who has been consistently working 20 colts in a day, and his gloves are new? This alone was enough to immediately tell me that whoever directed the film did not have a real connection with the content of the literature, and definitely did not have a connection with the lives of the people the literature represented. Nicholas Evans wrote: In the middle of the arena stood a small corral some thirty feet across and it was here that Tom and Rimrock were working. The sweat was starting to streak the dust on Tom’s face and he wiped it on the sleeve of his faded blue snap-button shirt. His legs felt hot under the old leather chaps he wore over his jeans. He’d done eleven colts already and now this was his twelfth, a beautiful black thoroughbred.” This was a small detail that probably would have been ignored had it not been for the next huge stray from the text at the end of the film. Nicolas Evans wrote: Then the terrible sound, sufficient alone to ratify the passage of his life, the hooves came down upon his head and struck him like a crumbled icon on the ground. (Pg. 394)
Annie looked at it a long time before she opened it. She thought how strange it was that never till now had she seen Tom’s handwriting. Inside, folded in a sheet of plain white paper, was the loop of cord he’d taken back from her on that last night they spent together in the creek house. On the paper, all he’d written was, In case you forgot.” (Pg. 404) What actually happened on film was Tom having thwarted off the stallion rather than being killed. He goes back to the ranch, and in the final scene Annie drives away reaching over to the passenger seat to pick up the length of cord and cry as she heads back to New York and away from the still very much living Tom. This wildly drastic change probably came from the difference in what a visual audience would want to see on a Sunday matinee, and what a reader experiencing a raw human story would expect. When I love a piece of literature, I feel like a director or screenwriter can get away with a lot in the middle. They can change dialogue and setting. They can negate the little details that give a different feel. However, if the end doesn’t tie back together the central theme of the text, it almost seems like I were tricked into watching something I didn’t agree with. It’s like buying Coca-cola only to open the can and find water.… Expand

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Broyax

Sep 19, 2018

C'est Papy Redford (eh oui, déjà Papy à l'époque) mauvais acteur de son état qui fait aussi des films de temps en temps. Heureusement que c'est seulement "de temps en temps" parce qu'il est aussi mauvais réalisateur que mauvais acteur.

Ainsi Papy n'a rien compris à la post-production (ilC'est Papy Redford (eh oui, déjà Papy à l'époque) mauvais acteur de son état qui fait aussi des films de temps en temps. Heureusement que c'est seulement "de temps en temps" parce qu'il est aussi mauvais réalisateur que mauvais acteur.

Ainsi Papy n'a rien compris à la post-production (il doit confondre avec la Poste) et toutes les chutes, toutes les scènes en trop, il les met quand même dans le film. Du coup, le merdier fait presque 3 heures et là, bonjour les dégâts. Déjà que l'histoire est con-con et neuneu, c'était vraiment pas la peine d'en rajouter et de repasser encore plusieurs couches. Putain, tu vois pas que ça déborde ?

Bon cela dit, moi aussi j'aime beaucoup les chevaux. Je suis comme tout le monde, j'aime les lasagnes. Mais il s'intéresse surtout au canasson accidenté plutôt qu'à la petite ado (la petite Scarlett ololol !) qui veut remonter de toute façon sur le putain de cheval, lequel fait une dépression nerveuse. Mais Papy psychanalyse le bourrin : il lui murmure à l'oreille trois fois par semaine. Et entre-deux, ils jouent aux cartes. Par dessus cette chienlit déjà insupportable de mièvrerie, Papy a rajouté (comme si c'était pas assez) une idylle avec la maman working girl et bizness woman. Qu'est-ce qu'on s'en fout sans déconner ! c'est aussi guimauve et aussi chiant que tout le Montana réuni... Parce que oui, Papy, il est aussi super écolo en plus d'être champion du Quinté+.

Quoi qu'il en soit, le film entier est comme le canasson névropathe : un sacré tocard !… Expand

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69	#69 Best Movie of 1998
86	#86 Most Shared Movie of 1998