This strapping action-adventure about a Pony Express rider, played by Viggo Morgensen, and his horse Hidalgo is based on the life of one Frank T. Hopkins. According to the legend Hopkins propagated, he traveled to Arabia in the 1890s with his trusty brown-and-white Mustang and competed in a grueling, 3,000 mile-long endurance race called the “Ocean of Fire.” Questions have been raised about Hopkins’ veracity. Some historians doubt whether he participated in the race and if it even existed in the form depicted. His claims about his exploits in the Wild West are also suspect.

Yet the handsome if overlong Hidalgo appeals to the adventure seeking mountebank in all of us. Quibbles about historical accuracy or originality miss its rugged charm. That said, it also engages in a jingoistic kind of cultural typing, disturbing in light of current world events. (The race runs through modern-day Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq.) While it features stirring sword-, gun-, and horseplay laced with strands of exoticism and handsomely shot scenery, Arab customs are pointedly contrasted with quintessential New World virtues like honesty, fairness, and toughness. Notions concerning equine breeding and bloodlines enforce the cultural comparison. Mustangs are mixed-breeds and so is the half-white, half-Native American Hopkins. The underdog mongrel and the infidel stand no chance of beating the Bedouins and their purebreds, unless a movie studio has a budget of $80 million riding on the outcome. 

These days Hollywood seems obsessed with the white man's treatment of the Indians. Compared to Tom Cruise's 2003 vehicle The Last Samurai, at least the issue has relevance in Hidalgo. In addition to being Native American, we see Hopkins transport the Army orders that lead to the massacre at Wounded Knee. Disillusioned, he and the aging Hidalgo then join Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show before being challenged to compete in the “Ocean of Fire.”

Hopkins' bitterness over the exploited Indians is echoed by glimpses of the African slave trade, plus misogyny and punitive justice in the Arab world. Hopkins knows better. His innate moral rectitude compels him to rescue a kidnapped woman in one of the film’s more exciting sequences, and save a fellow competitor from quicksand. Not that he’s above handing out a swift and fierce justice, usually when defending his horse’s honor. The race itself comes down to three steeds, who are no competition for Hidalgo’s intestinal fortitude and Hopkins’ mystical communion with his Native American roots.

Viggo Mortensen nails the archetypal cowboy. He doesn’t have the greatest range but he gets better as the movie progresses. As one woman at a preview screening said to her girlfriend looking up at the big screen: “What’s not to like about a forty-foot tall Viggo Mortensen?” Omar Sharif returns to his Lawrence of Arabia stomping grounds to portray Sheik Riyadh, the kindly, traditional potentate whose honor is wrapped up in his family’s horses. Louise Lombard gives a cool turn as a scheming English noblewoman with an entry in the race.

Hidalgo succeeds on the necessary and most obvious levels. By trumpeting the superiority of American culture it could be used as propaganda by someone interested in defending America's recent incursion in the region. If only political and cultural warfare were as simple as the movies.

(Released by Touchstone Pictures and rated "PG-13" for adventure violence and some mild innuendo.)