'HIDALGO' SADDLED WITH VIOLENCE AND SUBPLOTS.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

FOR A MOVIE that depicts the world's most unlikely horse race as an ironclad historical fact, ``Hidalgo'' is an awfully uninvolving affair.

Never mind the sketchy truth of the thing or the dodgy racial stereotypes it skirts. If the filmmakers had bothered to focus on the race itself and not get lost in some silly subplots that pad its running time to an uncomfortably long 136 minutes, ``Hidalgo'' might be something of a lark instead of the intermittently entertaining slog that it now is.

The film stars Viggo Mortensen as Frank Hopkins, a cowboy haunted by the role he played in the slaughter of the Sioux at Wounded Knee.(

Hopkins joins Kevin Costner's John Dunbar and Tom Cruise's Nathan Algren as the wounded souls of the Old West.) Eking out a living at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Hopkins gets a shot at redemption when he and his famous horse, Hidalgo, are invited to compete in the Ocean of Fire, a 3,000-mile race across the Arabian desert.

It's a classic underdog story. Here's Hidalgo, a mustang, a ``little express pony,'' as one participant derisively calls him, up against 100 of these hulking, purebred, desert-born stallions. Here's Hopkins, the ``infidel,'' riding in territory he doesn't know in a race where typically ``40 men are roasted alive'' during its first leg.

But director Joe Johnston (``Jurassic Park III'') and screenwriter John Fusco (the ``Young Guns'' movies) aren't content with offering up a simple adventure yarn. They give Frank a hokey back story about being from mixed blood (he and Hidalgo are the same, you see), set him up with the frustrated daughter (Zuleikha Robinson) of the ruling sheik (Omar Sharif) and then sharply veer the story away from the race and into a 25-minute rescue subplot that's notable only for the number of ways the movie kills people and maintains its family-friendly PG-13 rating. (FYI: The methods include beheading, impaling, spears, swords, knives and guns.)

By the time Hidalgo (and the guy riding him) has finished rescuing everyone's bacon, you wonder how the fine steed has the energy to go back and finish the event. And, of course, he didn't. Despite the fact that Disney is promoting the film as something of a true story, there is absolutely no record of any kind of desert race run from Aden to Syria. Not that we'd really care, provided the movie delivered on its promise of action and excitement.

Instead,we get Mortensen making Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name look like Jack Black on amphetamines, Sharif wasted in a role that could have fondly echoed his work in ``Lawrence of Arabia,'' and a computer-generated sandstorm that wouldn't scare an old woman who had a phobia about dust. The horse is great, though, the best actor in the company and strong enough to keep ``Hidalgo'' from being a complete also-ran.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

HIDALGO - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: adventure violence, mild innuendo about castration)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif.

Director: Joe Johnston.

Running time: 2 hr. 16 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Underdog story derailed by unnecessary subplots.