C

Subtlety has never been Steven Spielberg’s strong suit, but when the director is at his best, his full-bore approach is hard to resist. Unfortunately, “War Horse”—Spielberg’s first live-action film in years (his other picture of 2011, “The Adventures of Tintin,” is animated, of course)—finds him going for the emotional jugular so intensely that what might have been simply heart-on-sleeve becomes bleeding heart instead. Aching to be magical, the picture instead comes off as a “Wonderful World of Disney” retread on steroids.

As crafted by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, the picture falls into two distinct parts. The first, which might be thought of as “E.T.” with hoofs, narrates how a rambunctious young colt, obviously unsuited for manual work, is recklessly purchased by boozy Devon tenant farmer Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) at an absurdly high price, just to spite his snooty landlord Lyons (David Thewlis), who’s also bidding on the animal. The purchase brings Ted scorn from his hard-working but supportive wife Rose (Emily Watson), who makes allowance for the trauma—and physical injury—her husband suffered in the Boar War, but is concerned the debt will lead to loss of their land.

But their adolescent son Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who’s loved the horse since it was born, takes over its training—calling it Joey—and in one of those triumphant-underdog sequences that’s the stuff of such family fare, boy and horse combine to plow a rocky field that’s gone unused for years and could produce a crop that will save the farm. Even the family goose—a feisty creature Spielberg uses (or overuses) to provide comic relief, “Babe”-style—honks away happily over the accomplishment, joining the townsfolk who have come to watch and applaud in amazement.

But when World War I breaks out, Ted sells Joey for cavalry service, and the horse becomes the steed of strapping Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston). Thus begins the episodic tale of the horse’s experiences in the Great War. Nicholls, who sends word of Joey back to Albert, soon falls in a foolish charge against a German camp, and the enemy seizes the stallion. But two young brothers (Leonhard Carow and David Kross) commandeer the horse to go AWOL, which leads to Joey’s falling into the hands of an elderly French farmer (Niels Arestrup) and his charming young granddaughter (Celine Buckens) after the deserters are captured and executed.

But the Germans aren’t to be denied. They retrieve the horse to assist in hauling their heavy guns about the battlefield. By this time, however, Albert has joined the army and is serving in the trenches, and “War Horse” has entered its “Saving Private Joey” phase. This includes a sequence portraying a futile British assault on enemy positions on the Somme—comparable to the D-Day opening of “Private Ryan,” but lacking a similar grittiness and intensity—that concludes with an unlikely truce as two soldiers, one from each side, work together to free the horse from the barbed wire in which it’s gotten entangled. That brings Joey into the British camp, where the injured horse is reunited with its old master—temporarily blinded in a mustard-gas attack—in a scene that’s simply soaked in sentiment.

And still that’s not enough for Spielberg. As the war suddenly comes to a close, who should show up to bid against Albert on the animal at auction—behold the symmetry with the opening!—but the old French grandfather who wants to purchase it in memory of his now-dead granddaughter? Happily he and Albert come to a teary understanding, which leads to the ultimate dose of sugar as boy and horse return home to England and hugs from Rose and Ted, in a final tableau drenched in golden sunlight.

Equine-lovers may be deeply moved by Spielberg’s film, but there’s such heavy calculation and overstatement to virtually every scene in it that the approach comes to feel oppressive rather than emotionally compelling. The images conjured up by Spielberg, production designer Rick Carter, art director Neil Lamont and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski are unfailingly beautiful, but that’s the case even in sequences—like the cavalry charge and the trench assault—where something less lovely and antiseptic and more wrenching would seem appropriate. (Be assured that the staging of those battle sequences avoids any hint of real bloodshed, just as the firing-squad execution of the German deserters is depicted very discreetly, at considerable remove and through the revolving slats of an artistically-placed windmill.) Moreover, though the camera lingers on Joey from beginning to end, it can’t penetrate the horse’s skin to tell the story from the animal’s perspective, as the book did; and so all that remains is a series of episodes in which a succession of humans admire Joey as the horse goes through the stages of its eventful journey to hell and back, as it were.

Still, the horse does outact most of the human cast, the majority of whom fall too easily into the overripe tone set by the director. Mullan and Thewlis certainly play to the rafters in the early going, and though Watson is more restrained, it’s merely by comparison. Of the continental figures only Arestrup manages a secure emotional connection, though even here it’s merely his lovably crotchety quality that’s winning. As for Irvine, he’s agreeable enough in a pallid teen way, but makes a fairly colorless hero. And John Williams’ swelling score mirrors their work in being inflated.

“War Horse” had great success on the printed page, and on stage in both London and New York in Nick Stafford’s adaptation. But Spielberg’s self-indulgent, overlong film—visually opulent but saccharine—represents one lumbering lap too many.