"It’s the restraint that makes War Horse remarkable. Spielberg shows you enough to understand that what you’re watching — machine guns, mustard gas, bodies stretching into the distance — was unprecedented. And amid the incomprehensible slaughter, it’s a horse that reminds these warriors of their humanity. … Spielberg has been ridiculed for shooting his actors from below against impossibly Spielbergian skies and a denouement that lays the love on copiously. But there’s nothing simpleminded about how he uses movie magic, as a spell to dispel nihilism, to save us from the worst of ourselves by summoning up the best."