Grade: B-

If you’re an equestrian, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this old-fashioned, feel-good quasi-historical tale about an American who enters a 3,000-mile race across the Arabian desert with his speedy mustang toward the close of the nineteenth century; in the process he overcomes both prejudice against his “outsider” status and his own personal demons while learning about a foreign culture. As family fare, “Hidalgo”–named after the horse–should score with audiences, just as director Joe Johnston’s “October Sky” and “Jumanji” did, though at quite different levels. But while the picture is well-meaning and handsomely mounted, many will find it too formulaic, earnest and leisurely to be much more than a barely passable diversion.

Viggo Mortensen, shorn of his King Aragorn beard, strikes a stalwart figure as Frank T. Hopkins, a U.S. Cavalry dispatch rider who leaves the service in disgust after witnessing the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. In a twist not unlike what Tom Cruise suffered in “The Last Samurai,” he starts to drink all too heavily and joins Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, riding his prize-winning painted horse Hidalgo in a theatrical parody of his onetime victory in a long-distance race. But when challenged by Sheikh Riyadh (Omar Sharif), overseer of the Ocean of Fire–a contest that pits pureblooded Arabian steeds and their noble owners in a trek through the blazing desert–to enter the competition, Hopkins accepts. The sheikh proves hospitable enough, but his fellow riders look upon the presence of an infidel and a wild stallion as virtual blasphemy, and show him no quarter. Fortunately the sheikh’s daughter Jazira (Zuleikha Robinson) is a progressive sort and takes to Hopkins; she will also be kidnapped by ruffians to induce the sheikh to turn over his prize horse to them–allowing Hopkins and a valiant black servant to rescue her and thereby earn a measure of respect from the locals.

There’s a slight hint of a romantic attraction between Hopkins and Jazira, too, but the real love story in “Hidalgo” is between the man and his horse, which a mustang named T.J. turns into an animal character of real personality and charm. In the long, grueling, episode-laden journey across the sands (there are sandstorms, locust attacks and other assorted perils to overcome), the two interact nicely with one another, with Mortensen ably assuming the old John Wayne mantle as the reserved, almost knightly sagebrush hero–the quietly competent man of courage and integrity–and playing off his more rambunctious but level-headed equine companion. They become a genuine team, with the horse bolstering its rider and even nagging him when necessary to do the right thing and see their job through; the guy and his steed have the sort of chemistry that boys and dogs shared in some old live-action movies–a considerable accomplishment, attributable to both of them.

The remainder of the cast is, in a case like this, truly playing supporting roles. Sharif lends his natural dignity and a certain impishness to Riyadh and Robinson is likable as Jazira, but they’re entirely secondary to the central relationship between Hopkins and Hidalgo. And the surrounding characters–a British noblewoman (Louise Lombard) who has not only a horse in the race but a secret agenda, an elderly Indian chief (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) who early on serves as Hopkins’ confidant, an Arabian Gabby Hayes who’s assigned to act as Hopkins’ helper (and, with his constant blather, as the movie’s comic relief figure), a young slave whom Hopkins rescues, along with all the local riders and rogues–are basically caricatures, and sometimes stereotypes as well. J.K. Simmons, however, manages to bring a measure of subtlety to an otherwise fairly standard impression of Buffalo Bill.

But if John Fusco’s script never takes the story beyond convention or invests it with the depth it might have had, Johnston and his production team–designer Barry Robison and cinematographer Shelly Johnson in particular–give it a degree of surface grandeur, and James Newton Howard complements the visuals with a score that adds to the spirit without becoming unduly bombastic. Together they provide a rich backdrop for a rather standard-issue man-and-his-horse story which doesn’t transcend the obvious and is rather slowly paced, but still passes the finish line winded but game.