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Credits

Rated: PG-13; Genres: Drama, Romance; With: Kristin Scott Thomas and Robert Redford; Distributor: Touchstone Pictures

Director Robert Redford's adaptation of Nicholas Evans' best-seller positively shimmers, all verdant vistas, gently undulating flanks, and natural highlights. Even on video, The Horse Whisperer is a dazzling backdrop for an earnest, clunky foreground, in which an uptight magazine editor (Scott Thomas) hires an aging-but-still-virile cowboy (guess who) to ''gentle'' her recently injured daughter (Scarlett Johansson) and the girl's traumatized horse...and maybe woo her, too. Much gauzy sensitivity and healing ensues, with Redford's rugged dude murmuring aphorisms (''Knowing is the easy part. Saying it out loud is the hard part'') as if he were the author of Equine Soup for the Soul. Watch Ordinary People while leafing through a Lands' End catalog for roughly the same experience. C+


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Posted Nov 06, 1998
 

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