Review of Out Stealing Horses

Here's the movie for you explained in literally all there is to it.

• Very weird encounter with childhood figure with long, unnatural dialogue (*cough monologue) about the killing of dogs with unnerving reactions. You'll see slightly more of this sorta conversation throughout.
• Boy gets orgasms by the woods.
• That one time actually stealing horses.
• Grief makes you suddenly say incredibly weird uncomfortable noises and be disgusting smashing bird eggs and fall off of tree you just climbed up in.
• Boys are playing and one takes a rifle for fun and shoots the other one, because logic.
• Depression, depression, depression, beautiful commercial shots everywhere, *boy*hood, *man*hood, woman*hood* oh so sexy, beautiful commercial shots everywhere.
• Nude bathing in the rain. You've got to have that obligatory father-son bonding in the woods through playful nude bathing. No seriously, they're wild and macho-macho, we had to have this obligatory scene.
• Grieving wife cheats with macho-macho woods-man and macho-Tumblr-boy is kinda jealous cus he wanted some and also..sort of...had something going for a minute. Kind of. But never mind, they're all just fine.
• Cuckolded grieving husband? Pathetic. Irrelevant. No story. Same for the kids, kind of (you'll hear weird mumbling from one of the sons later, and please don't forget that it's in the premise of the movie). Bye cuckolded grieving husband.
• Saving someone who escape from the war situation. I can see how this could have added layers to the characters and the story and the purpose but no, it just happens and that's it. We are supposed to think these characters are all great now, right? Yes, that must have been the point. Or something. Just adding it in cus *drama relevant to the time*, and we definitely don't see it in other movies. No.
• Wait, he had a daughter, all this time?! I mean his screentime in the movie as an adult is probably 15 minutes even wrapping the story of his dead wife, which was introduced as the, wait, the wrapping and arc of him dealing with his wife and entertwining it with the relevance of the past didn't really happen and even the referenced new year eve at the beginning was just glossed over, oh. Actually he should probably just see his daughter more in the present and take it to heart to not be like the stereotypical depressed grandpa who lives secluded and gets weird. Like, maybe... Or don't, you do you, this is a fictional story.
• Old men having a story together... kinda... you both have parents and siblings making terrible decisions all over the movie. Like a lot of the random stuff we saw you doing throughout the movie where specifically your heart, main boy Trond, only really reached the two things that made you orgasm. The woods, and the grieving wife cheating with your macho-macho daddy. I feel no emapthy or sympathy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why this movie sucks despite trying its best with the most gorgeous visuals from start to end. I did not find it to be slow. I like movies that are philosophical and know to deliver a theme, character stories, reflect life and make you feel. Boyhood and Captain Fantastic are just two more recent examples of that, although they are focused present day or closer to present day and this is not. This movie is just not hitting the mark, at all. And as someone who cried to all the sob-story movies and am a sucker for having movies making me feel, it was a mission impossible to feel *anything* for any of these characters and their journeys other than annoyance, disappointment, confusion, mild shock, and a desire for them to be more than stereotypical, one-dimensional characters in gorgeous visuals showing a range of human emotions because it's art and that means they can. I don't know whether to blame any of this on the book since I haven't read it, but now I'm certainly not going to read it. The unlikability factor alone of the characters and the pretty much non-existent or at least poorly developed and structured story is insane, and there are so many scenes just shooting you with weird over-the-top reactions or unnatural dialogue to appear artsy and meaningful and tell you what is going on rather than showing the development or humanity of it organically and naturally. And I can't stress it enough, the characters show nothing making them worth almost two hours for, certainly not the lack of empathy, stereotypes of manhood and womanhood, lack of natural dialogue and the romanticising grief, unfaithfulness and that weird encounter with the boy and the woman. The 1 star may seem harsh, but let's just say that the one star is for those visuals that seriously carried the movie and made it watchable. Because everything else was not.