Hidalgo (film) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

In 1891, wealthy Sheikh Riyadh (Omar Sharif) sends his attaché Aziz (Adam Alexi-Malle) to invite American Frank Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), and his mustang, Hidalgo, to enter the "Ocean of Fire," an annual 3,000-mile survival race across the Najd desert region, a race traditionally restricted to pure-bred Arabian horses.

Hopkins had been a cowboy and a dispatch rider for the United States government. In this capacity, he had carried a message to the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment, authorizing the attack at Wounded Knee that resulted in massacre of a band of Lakota Sioux.

While working as a stunt rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Hopkins and his horse are advertised as "the world's greatest distance horse and rider". The Arabs consider the al-Khamsa line to be the greatest distance horses. Aziz asks the show to stop using that phrase or to allow Hopkins and Hidalgo to enter the race and prove themselves.

The American cowboy and his mustang are placed against the world's greatest Arabian horses and Bedouin riders, some of whom are determined to prevent a foreigner—and especially an "impure" horse—from finishing the race. For Hopkins, the Ocean of Fire becomes not only a matter of pride and honor but a race for his survival, as he and his horse attempt the near-impossible desert crossing. He intends to use the purse for saving mustangs. They were important to the Indians, who trained and used them, but the US government was trying to eliminate them to convert the Indians to farming.

Throughout the race, competitors try to kill Hopkins and Hidalgo. Chief adversaries include the wealthy, spoiled British aristocrat Lady Anne Davenport (Louise Lombard), who owns a rival Arabian horse and is used to getting her own way. Another is the Sheikh's nephew, who wishes, contrary to his uncle's decree, to marry his cousin, the sheikh's daughter Jazira (Zuleikha Robinson). A spirited girl and a horse-rider in her own right, she is rescued by Hopkins from a raid in which the Sheikh's nephew hoped to force her marriage by dishonoring her. She grows to trust the American.

A recurring theme in the film is the fact that Hopkins' father was European American and his mother a member of the Native American Lakota tribe. The Lakota call him "Blue Child" or "Far Rider". As a half-breed, he feels sympathy and pity for his mother's people, who are being driven to extinction by the settlers. However, he does not generally reveal his heritage, especially after the Wounded Knee massacre, for which he feels partly responsible. Jazira compares his relation to his heritage to her desire to avoid wearing a veil, saying that he mustn't "go through life hiding what God made you.... like me."

Near the end of the race, Hidalgo is severely injured and Hopkins is dying of thirst. As he hallucinates, by Lakota tradition he sings a prayer to Wakan Tanka as his death song. But Hidalgo struggles up, and Hopkins rides bareback to finish the race, which he wins. After Hopkins returns to the United States, he buys many mustangs which would have been killed by the Government in an effort to control Indians. He releases the horses, including Hidalgo, into the wild.