While I had several minor gripes about this film, it still managed to come off as one rousing, spectacular and ultimately vastly entertaining film.  This movie has some of the most beautiful, eyepopping outdoor scenes and it reminded me of the some of the old-time great adventure films.  Many critics are complaining and questioning about the so-called "base on a true story" aspect to this film.  But I found that the historical basis of this movie to be irrelevant to whether it is good or bad.

      The film tells the story of cowboy Frank Hopkins, played in a most brooding manner by Viggo Mortensen, who goes from riding in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show to entering a long distance race in the Arabian desert.  There he races his Mustang against the long-time breed Arabian horses, as well as against a horse owned by a sneaky and dangerous woman from England.  Hopkins is a legendary long distance endurance rider but seems to be out of his territory racing against the stronger and bigger Arabian horses with his smaller Mustang.  The race begins and we soon find out that some of the horse owners will go to no lengths to win the race.

      During the race, one of the bad guys kidnaps the Sheikh's daughter named Jazira in order to ultimately hold her ransom for the Sheikh's prize stallion. The Sheikh is played most entertaining by Omar Sharif who has been unfortunately too long absent from the big screen.  The Sheikh asks Hopkins to rescue his daughter along with a couple of his other men.  This results in some really neat action scenes which reminded somewhat of the Indiana Jones movies.  When the race resumes, there are sandstorms, desert traps, and Bedouin raiders on the loose to get in the way of Hopkins trying to win the prize.

      As I said before, I could care less how much of this story is fact and how much is legend.  For what it is, it is one fun and entertaining film that the whole family can watch.  Yes, you can actually take your kids to see this film as there is no unnecessary sex scenes and no gratuitous bloody swordfights.  It's nice to see a director actually leave something to the viewer's imagination for once.  Although both adults and kids might grimace at the shot of an injured horse's leg.

      Now for the quibbles.  The film starts off slow and is too long.  A tighter editing job would have helped the pace of this film quite a bit.  The few special effects used in the film are not very well done but fortunately don't last very long.  While Viggo Mortensen does fine in the lead role, he just does not have the screen presence or charisma of say a young Harrison Ford.  He mumbles his dialog too much and he seems too laconic at times which contradicts his rousing persona during the action scenes.  So, the choice to have Mortensen play this role turned out ok, but probably could have been better.

      Easily the best thing about the film is the cinematography and the the spectacular desert scenes during the race.  The horses running, the swordfights, the rescues, etc. are all magnificently shot and displayed on the big screen. They don't make these types of grand adventure films much anymore so it's a pleasant trip to the theatre when they do one that is so entertaining as this one, even with it's flaws.

     I highly recommend watching this one on the biggest screen that you can find.  Don't wait to watch it on DVD.