Search - Shergar: Discover the Heart of a Champion: Based on a True Story on DVD

Aimee M. (AimeeM)
Reviewed on 3/31/2008...

This movie is fairly entertaining. I like the accents anyway!
It is not really a "kids" movie, although obviously kids would like it. It actually has some pretty violent scenes that might frighten younger kids.

It is worth watching if you like horses and Belfast accents! :)

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The movie Shergar ought to come with a warning.

Julie A. Gobbell | 02/25/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"As a devoted movie-lover and horse-owner, I must say I regret watching this movie. The only good that came from watching it is at least now I know who Shergar was.

The failure of this film rests entirely in its plot, which is pure fantasy (or nightmare) and utterly unrealistic. The ending is so atrocious it destroyed the little bit of pleasure that I experienced watching beautiful horses and scenery.

Before I purchased the movie (on sale), I read the description of the plot thinking it might be similar to "Flash." "Flash" is a very well made fictional Disney movie about a boy who steals back his horse from an abusive owner and rides it from Georgia to New Jersey to save its life and be reunited with his merchant-marine father.

Instead, the movie "Shergar" should come with a warning. It is far more similar to "Phar Lap," a well-produced drama which condenses the life of Australia's most famous flat-track Thoroughbred and ends with Phar Lap's sudden and mysterious death.

Like many pleasure-horse owners, I'm not an expert on the history--even the recent history--of international equine celebrities. But even if I had known that Shergar was most likely killed by his abductors, the horribly patched-up ending of the movie made me nearly physically ill with grief and shock.

I will probably keep the movie just as a part of my horse film collection, but I will never watch it again. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but in this case the truth (still a mystery) is MUCH preferred to this piece of fiction, "based on a true story."

If you love horse movies, purchase a nice new DVD of Coppola's Classic, "The Black Stallion," or Disney's "Flash." You'll get all the beauty, suspense, and thrills without a sickening ending."

Again, for the horse

A Constant Reader | New York City, NY | 01/16/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Who wrote this thing? Who directed it? Who could make Ian Holm almost less than good? Who scored it? The insensitive inappropriate music that swallowed up and spat out our emotions was criminal. What happened to Mickey Rourke's face? That was also criminal. Some plastic surgeon somewhere made him look like Frankenstein's monster...all he left out were the neck bolts. Why was O'Rourke in it in the first place? He played a small, wooden, and rather pointless part...then they killed him, rather ingloriously. As for the story woven around the very sad truth of Shergar's kidnapping for ransom by the throroughly inglorious IRA (so O'Rourke's death was at least right in one way), it wasn't bad, it had a certain charm. The boy playing the actual hero here tried his best with the character as written. But a real boy would have gone straight to the cops and the real Shergar would have been home in an hour. For his good deed, the boy would have been a national hero and no one would be throwing him back in gaol. Bad plot point, very bad. But as he didn't, but instead kept running that wonderful horse around the Irish countryside (some beautiful scenery) we got to meet a hippie-tinker and his charming daughter...who is this minute, I hope, enjoying a solid career in the Irish theater. As for running the horse off a cliff (ala Thelma and Louise), the least the writer could do was allow the boy to die with the horse. After all, it was his decision to kill him in such a way and his responsibility to do to himself what he'd done to the horse. But no, he comes alive again and we are all supposed to be happy, happy, even adding a weanling Shergar foal to make us even happy happier. Horsewallop. I was totally cheesed off. Kill the real horse, save the made-up boy, and we all leave the movie satisfied? Not bloody likely.

I thought about the real kidnapping after the movie was over (poor thing that it was), and decided though the IRA might well have been stupid enough to kidnap a great horse, an Irish national hero, for which no one was going to pay them money so they might buy bombs and more arms, they would not be stupid enough to kill him when their ill-conceived plan failed. He was still worth money. And a lot of it. In my opinion, they sold him to the Japanese or the Arabs or the Auzzies for good coin of whichever realm. If they had killed him, they would have wanted us to know...but no proof was ever forthcoming. They'd want us to know in order to show the kind of men they were: dedicated to their cause, serious, not to be taken lightly, and vengeful. Of course, if they killed the horse most people would see them as stupid, cruel, insensitive, and chained to a cause that means nothing in the end but one stupid bloody act after another. If Shergar wound up in a foreign country, two things would happen. One, the rich owner would know it was Shergar, even if he couldn't say so...just as buyers of stolen artwork live with no one knowing. Two, he could breed him, and though the results couldn't be openly named Shergar's progeny, some of them were bound to inherit Daddy's brilliance, and _they_ could be named, and go to become valuable themselves. I know someone in the _know_ claimed they killed him right after the kidnapping because he was so difficult to handle. But they would say that, wouldn't they...to cover the secret deal they made with someone somewhere.

That's what I'd like to believe anyway...and it certainly could have happened that way. My reality allows Shergar a long life somewhere warm, where he covered a lot of good mares, and is only now getting ready to die of a contented old age.

If nothing else, the movie made me think. Hence the two stars. One really."

What really happened to Shergar?

Artist & Author | Near Mt. Baker, WA | 12/16/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"More than twenty years after the disappearance of the real-life great race horse, Shergar, the mystery continues as to what really happened to him. [Those involved, years later, said he was so high-strung they shot him just hours or a day or two after he was stolen because they couldn't handle him. Since Shergar was owned by the Aga Khan, worth about $4-5 billion at the time, ransom was immediately ruled out.] With this in mind, this movie should be watched, not as a docudrama but as fiction, with only the horse's name and kidnapping being factual.

Both my wife and I were fully captivated by the story until the unexpected ending. As with most movies, there are a few "holes" in the story, but not enough to detract from the adventure and suspense. We enjoyed the movie (and we own more than a thousand DVD movies related to kids and teens). Because we could not stop rooting for the boy to save the horse, I rate it an above average, but not a classic, horse movie.

[Parents might wish to discuss with their kids what the boy should have done with the hores instead of what he actually did.]"