Film Review - The Lighthorsemen (1987)

The Lighthorsemen tells the tale of the Australian Light horse division during the first world war, well 1917 to be exact, the story here is that a young man named Dave Mitchell (Peter Phelps) who is eager to join the light horse and save his country, meanwhile a new army sergeant plans to take one of the enemy towns to use as a supply base.

The Lighthorsemen is a rousing Australian adventure directed by Simon Wincer, best known as one of the key people behind the Man from Snowy River and who also directed the recently released film The Cup about the 2002 Melbourne Cup horse race, he clearly seems in his element here doing a proper action adventure film with hundreds of horses at his disposal and their put to good work here as some of the action scenes in this movie are nothing short of spectacular as the sight of all those horses charging down the planes is a fantastic sight, especially in the final charge scene which is just breathtaking in its exhilaration, THAT is how you do a long battle sequence, not the relentless 60 + minutes of loud banging and crashing and smashing and shouting that we got in Transformers 3, but then you can't expect something bordering on coherent with Michael Bay now can you?

But my praise doesn't stop there, it extends to two other people, Mario Millo who composed the music and Dean Semler who was the films cinematographer, Semler shoots this film beautifully with rich colours, long wide shots that you couldn't bare to see butchered in pan and scan 4:3, long shots of the Australian desert that seem to go on forever and ever and finally the lush paradise at the hospital that seems a world away from the barren wastelands of war.

Millo on the other hands composes a rousing musical score that perfectly captures the tone of the film, some parts rousing, some parts with a lightness of touch and others capturing the spirit of Australian mateship, at times I was reminded of both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Gallipoli while watching this movie, no doubt the intention of its makers in which case if it was well they damn well succeeded.

All in all, despite a small role from Sigrid Thornton that bordered on dispensable despite doing the best she can to make it work, the Lighthorsemen is a rousing Aussie adventure that's well worth your time, 4 out of 5.