AT nearly three hours long, there's one thing The Horse Whisperer will definitely make you feel - and that's saddlesore

Apart from numb bottom cheeks and a yearning desire to go for a wee, it will probably also make you feel slightly warm-hearted, enriched with a few human emotions and enlightened with a love of the midwest American countryside.

Depending on whether you like dopey romances or not, it may also make you feel slightly gooey inside.

The horse whisperer in question - apart from being a butt for lots of feeble audience hoarse/horse jokes - is Tom Booker (Robert Redford).

He is one of those guys, like Monty Roberts, who "breaks" horses by speaking to them in their own body language - rather than tying ropes too tight to parts of their anatomy and hitting them with things.

So, horse whisperer: nice bloke.

Meanwhile, while he is going about his gentle chatting to nags in Montana, there is a horse near New York City that could do with a bit of a chinwag. It is called Pilgrim and has been in an accident involving a rather large lorry.

On board at the time was Grace MacLean, a well-to-do rich kid who is mentally and physically affected by the whole "best-friend-dying-injured-for-life" shenanigan.

Her mother is Annie (Kristin Scott-Thomas) a hard-nosed magazine editor, without much in the way of true compassion.

Despite her charisma bypass, Annie decides the only way to bring her darling daughter out of her slough of despond is to get the girl's horse better - perhaps it will even strengthen the bond between mother and daughter.

Hubby Robert (Sam Neill) is left wimping about in a useless lawyer-type way, while mum and sprog set off with horsebox in tow to find the horse whisperer.

After an epic journey, they find the gnarly old dude and tell him their horse is broken and they want it fixed.

He says its not as easy as that, but then agrees.

The rest of the film focuses on the gradual rehabilitation of the mare, the growing confidence of the daughter and the illicit romance between Prada-wearing magazine editor and stetson-wearing cowboy bloke.

Why, then, is the film so long?

Mainly because the story is a real slow burner. It involves lots of meaningful looks, half-measured nods and crinkly eye corners (clever reference to the horse whispering, perhaps), but also because director Redford has been a bit self-indulgent with the amount of celluloid he decides to lavish on the whole deal.

Large parts of the stock are not wasted, either. The photography, from the glorious aerial views of the journey across America to the orange-tinged sunsets in the mid-west, is of a very high quality.

A real sense of "big sky" is beautifully depicted and there are some truly stunning sequences.

The story, too, is pleasant enough. Saggy in parts (a bit like Redford's face these days) but generally acceptable, it makes for a gentle, unfolding romance with some horses for company.

It is clear Redford is still a fine actor. His dazzling looks are still apparent, as is his cheese-eating grin, but his poise is what makes him a cut above many of his contemporaries and he carries the wise, but tortured, Booker character well.

Scott-Thomas is also reasonable. Being blunt for a minute, she looked a bit too much like a horse for my money (perhaps he managed to break her, too) but she manages to portray the transformation from hard bitch to gooey farmhand-lover quite well.

The rest of the acting is fine, although Sam Neill must be nicking Bill Pullman's mail these days, because this trodden-on husband cameo is straight out of Pullman's Curriculum Vitae.

And the authenticity of the action is also well-researched.

With a passing knowledge of the art of Horse Whispering, Equus and the like, I found myself drawn far more intently to the progress of the horse than I did the onset of the imminent heart-fluttering, pants-down section.

Some of the dialogue is bad, some of it good and some of it out of the Forest Gump simple country folk handbook, like "Why do you always wear that hat?" "Because it fits my head."

There is also, it has to be mentioned, a particularly gruesome blood, horses and grappling scene.

But romantics will love it, couples will probably like it and horse riders will go to see it out of curiosity.

As long as they all have buttocks of steel and bladders the size of beach balls, the film will be a regular success. It sure will pard'ner.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.