Touching but not at all tear-jerking story about a half dog half wolf named Lighting who's forced out of the Benton horse farm and into the wild while his childhood or yearling friend, the majestic and strikingly handsome stallion, Warrior grew up without him only to later reunite with Lighting under the most unusual of circumstances.
Out on his own Lighting reverted back in order to survive in the wild to his wolf pedigree taking charge, by defeating the alpha male of a wolf pack and becoming the most feared canine in the county. Back at Benton's ranch Warrior grows up to be a powerful and fast as a bolt of lighting bay colt who's undoubtedly headed for racing greatness running morning quarter mile bullet workouts at unbelievable 21 or less second clips.
With the jealous and greedy hoodlum George Mason, Emmett Vogan, not being able to persuade Warrior's owner Cyrus Benton, Moroni Olsen, to sell the bay colt to him Mason and his hoods do the next best thing horse-nap Warrior out of his stall. Like his canine friend Lighting the rambunctious Warrior reverts back to his wild and free ingrained instincts and breaks away from the Mason gang, putting a number of them in the hospital. Warrior hooks up with a band of wild mustangs becoming their alpha, like Lighting with the wolf pack, stallion.
In the wild the two long lost friends meet and instinctively recognize each other from their early days at the Benton farm and become inseparable. It's the much smaller Lighting who comes to the aid of big and strapping warrior in a number of exciting scenes in the film. One in which he ferociously attacks one of Mason's hoods, who was trying to re-capture warrior. Lighting's wild and unrelenting attack on the hood was both so shocking and realistic, and all in one take, that for a moment I didn't think that I was watching a make-believe Hollywood movie.
Besides the two top animal stars there's also the love story between the Benton ranch's young horse trainer John Woods, John Arledge, and Mr. Benton's sweet and pretty teenage daughter Gloria, Louise Latiman.
During the movie John changes Mr. Benton's mind in his feeling that he doesn't have the right and proper breeding, the old man thinks of everything in life as a thoroughbred pedigree chart, to marry his sophisticated and well educated daughter. Mr. Benton later changes his mind at the end of the film when Mr. Benton realizes that John, like the half wolf and non-blue bred Lighting, had a lot more going for him in what he did in real life then what his blood-lines indicate on paper of how high up in the social register he is.
