I didn’t like it. But it’s genius. It’s genius because I cared nothing for any of the human characters who were all so crudely realised and two dimensional, but I cared deeply for the horse. That’s bad scriptwriting for me. But the film is called War Horse, so it doesn’t matter and will get away with it.

It didn’t feel like a Spielberg film for the first hour, it was an English TV movie. It’s solid and workaday. There are a couple of fantastic battle scenes and Joey the horse is a brilliant character. Also, one scene in No Man’s Land is moving, but otherwise it’s sugary and broad historiography with awful dialogue.