HIDALGO has gone through a bit of publicity geffuffle between the time of its completion and its release. It seems that the true story of mustang rider Frank T. Hopkins is arguably not so true after all, or so Western historians are coming forward in droves to tell us.

Watching HIDALGO, it's unclear whether all this debunking was necessary, at least for the movie's sake. The tale of a cowboy and his mustang who wind up participating as the first Americans invited to participate in a 3,000-mile race across the Arabian desert, as scripted by John Fusco and directed by Joe Johnston, becomes so big so fast that it seems closer kin to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK than any sort of history.

We meet Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen) happily winning races on his beloved horse Hidalgo across the Western prairie, when he's not delivering messages in his capacity as a courier for the U.S. Army. However, when Hopkins brings a dispatch that results in a genocidal massacre, his spirit is broken and he joins Wild Bill Hickok's (J.K. Simmons) Wild West Show as a drunken trick rider. However, Hidalgo's fame reaches the ear of Sheikh Riyadh (Omar Sharif), a Bedouin chieftain who is offended by Hickok's claim that Hidalgo is a great racer. Hopkins and Hidalgo are therefore offered to prove (or rather disprove) this statement by joining the Ocean of Fire, an endurance race that kills most of its participants. For a purse of $100,000, Hopkins is willing to do it, and Hidalgo is willing to do whatever Hopkins wants.

The bond between man and horse is suitably touching (it seems that no matter who is holding the reins at Disney, its reputation as a maker of fine animal stories will be upheld) and a lot of the action is breathtaking. Johnston knows his way around matinee thrills and even some tearjerker moments, but the amount of intrigue here, with kidnapers, usurpers, race-tamperers and you name it, makes it clear that we're watching something more based in Saturday afternoon joys than in a sober examination of something that really happened. Writer Fusco does try to get in a variety of points about the Bedouin culture and the shrinking of the West, but the former is presented so defensively (there is a fair amount of "You will never understand our ways" dialogue) and the latter so familiarly that we don't get much sense that we're learning something new.

The show here is Mortensen, who as Hopkins is a fine quiet hero very unlike the fine quiet hero he plays in the LORD OF THE RINGS films, and the gorgeous horse that plays Hidalgo, T.J. (in fact, a number of animals play Hidalgo, but the others are "painted" to match T.J.) Human actors would be lucky to have the chemistry that Mortensen and his steed generate, and in fact, at the end of filming, the actor purchased T.J. for his own.

The drama in HIDALGO is sometimes over the top, but you can't beat it for adventurous thrills and for the romance of a man and his horse. If part of your heart opens to any well-told story about the human/animal bond, that's where HIDALGO hits you, even if your brain is balking at parts of it.