I was fooled on this one – I thought this was going to be a movie about one of my favorite cars – the Ford Mustang. Nope – real mustangs, i.e. horses. Burned again by a homonym title! Now I’ve written about horses before – they are not my favorite animal. With their giant heads and stretched faces, seemingly too skinny legs, prehensile lips and giant horse teef, plus their horrific grunts, growls and whinnies – they give me the heebie-jeebies. Perhaps watching the Mr. Ed show as a kid traumatized me to horses? Who knows? In any event, I got used to them after a while in this movie, in fact, I just noticed that horses are the only mammals that have head hair besides their body hair/fur. Too bad they all have the same, stupid, Alfred E. Neuman haircut!
Anywho, this movie starred Matthias Schoenaerts as Roman, in a Nevada prison for twelve years for assaulting his wife and causing permanent brain disability. My biggest issue with his character was his complete lack of anger management – too over-the-top and cartoonish. In one scene, he actually started beating up a horse with his fists. And then gets a second chance? Come on, man! I had to Google him as I’ve never seen him in a movie before – he looks Hispanic but turns out to be Belgian. Does a great job with an American accent, though his dialogue for most of the movie was limited. Jason Mitchell was very good as Henry, another prisoner. And of course, Bruce Dern was superb as Myles, the rancher running the prison’s rehab program. Josh Stewart played a frightfully evil character, also in prison. Gideon Adlon (another unknown to me) played Roman’s pregnant daughter Martha.
The basic story (actually true) was about wild horses in the western United States that need to be rounded up every year to maintain a healthy population. Ranchers are hired to break the wild horses so they can be auctioned off for use. The prison program enlists prisoners to break the horses, and it says at the end credits that this program results in significantly less recidivism. All in all, this is a good idea. Briefly, the movie was about how this program helped Roman get his anger issues under control and in the end, re-paid the horse that accompanied him on his journey.
As Roman grew during the movie (yes hackneyed, but in this case satisfying), the movie grew on me. Although far-fetched, I was happy with the ending, and give this four Jerry Seinfeld horse faces out of six.