Keeping Up

War Horse

 Last night I saw War Horse at the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center.  It was great, better than I expected.  The story is kind of grim and somber, but it does have a happy ending.  The way they moved the horses was fantastic.  The movements were so life like.  The battle scenes are stylized, yet charged and visceral. It is amazing how your mind fills in the blanks and your imagination takes over.  The horror of horses being ridden into barbed wire and machine-gun fire yields particularly distressing moments. The horses being worked into the ground was heartbreaking.  In one scene, the horse comes up against a tank and they stand off, rearing up against one another, a standoff between nature and a machine. But despite its grim reality, the overriding tenderness of this story of how a boy and his horse endure the brutality of war will be worth the emotional trial.

I really liked this book.  It is a murder mystery.  It takes a while to get used to the language used, called flash, by some of the characters, but the author does explain what has been said.

 As described in Amazon: 1845. New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever.

Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, saving every dollar and shilling in hopes of winning the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this untested "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward-at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum.

One night while returning from his rounds, heartsick and defeated, Timothy runs into a little slip of a girl—a girl not more than ten years old—dashing through the dark in her nightshift . . . covered head to toe in blood.

Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life.

Yeah, I liked it.

I say that because I didn't know how I could accept Tom Cruise, who is barely 5'8, as the handsome, 6'4",  240lb Jack Reacher, but the magic of the movies took over and I was caught up in the story and I accepted him, at least 90%. 

The story follows the book and the details are not forgotten.  Tom has definitely set himself up for a series of Jack Reacher films,  there are 18 books and counting after all.