So I saw “Hidalgo” the other night with the Sci-Fi Club Gang. We went to Loews E-Walk for the 7:20 show, and though I’ve frequented 42nd Street many times over the past couple of years, it still amazes me how they can light Times Square at night and the effect is bright as day. It’s one of the great wonders of the world, ladies and gentlemen. Even if you’ve seen it in the movies, there is nothing like Times Square up-close and in person.

As for “Hidalgo” the movie, it is a serviceable adventure, and many will enjoy watching it at least once. It features an epic horse race across the “Ocean of Fire”—3,000 miles of scorching desert—which is the best thing the movie has to offer. Director Joe Johnston should have stuck more closely to the horse race plot, instead of digressing into more traditional action movie cheesiness. It’s a shame. “Hidalgo” makes a valiant effort to be something very good, and has a strong performance by Viggo Mortensen at its center. But it still falls short of greatness by a nose.

Okay, now I’m going to put diplomacy aside and rant. There is no reason for the evil brigand—the one who kidnapped the princess and ransomed her for the Sheik of Sheiks’ prize horse—to have had such a huge role in this film. I don’t mind that Frank Hopkins had to get sidetracked from the race. Yeah, the scene where he was about to have his tool of violation removed was pretty bad—“Arabian Nights” in-joke or not. But since “Hidalgo” is supposed to be an adventure movie, why not have him go rescue a princess? There might have actually been some sort of novelty in that; how many cowboy movies have you seen where the hero storms a Bastille full of Middle Eastern bad guys?

Hopkins should have rescued Princess Jazmina (Is there a Middle Eastern princess in the movies who isn’t named some variation of Jasmine?), killed her evil abductor, taken the girl home, then resumed the race. But no, the bad guy doesn’t get killed by what seems like a miracle. Cowboy Frank has all that bad guy to aim for, but manages to shoot him in his gun hand. Remind me, was there a Disney logo hovering above this movie’s title?

If Hopkins had killed the bad brigand—or better yet, if Hidalgo had run him over—we wouldn’t have had to endure the awful scene later, where the brigand and some other bad guys return to try and kill our hero. They fail, in spite of being armed with two CGI tigers (And Viggo isn’t even a gladiator!) What really made the scene awful was the way Hopkins finally dispatches the villain. He says a one-liner, “Nobody messes with my horse,” in the midst of an 80’s style close-up. What was this dumb action movie moment doing in what should have been the suspense-filled final leg of the race?

On the bright side, they eventually get back to the horse race (Which Hidalgo manages to find himself near the lead, somehow.) and the really bad CGI tigers never reappear. Also, Omar Shariff managed to make the Sheik of Sheiks into a complicated, sympathetic character which no sane man would try and cross. Finally, many of the Middle Eastern characters appear to have been played by Middle Eastern actors, which is itself impressive, given that the film was apparently shot mostly on Los Angeles soundstages. And finally, there was the end of the movie, when I got to go back outside to Times Square. Man, is it brightly lit.