The Mustang - Review

The Mustang

Matthias Schoenaerts a Belgian actor, film producer, and graffiti artist star in the partly true story of a man of few words in a rural Nevada prison named “Roman Coleman”. A convict who clearly is unable to keep his temper in check in Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s sober and humanistic character study “The Mustang.”

Early, it is clear Roman has a severe lack of anger management which is the reason he is incarcerated going on nearly a decade ago from a domestic violence incident with his ex-wife. We see in the opening scene he is getting counseling and rehabilitation help from the prison therapist (Connie Britton) but he is not having any of it. Deliberately he remains isolated and withdrawn; a framed poster of what a tortured man looks like who is now thoroughly broken completely. And though on some occasions he is a tad remorseful he easily goes back to being even angrier than before because of the deep seeded helplessness he feels from the isolation of the prison. With only his daughter coming to visit him, its clear their relationship is totally broken as well. He is just not good with people including his daughter.

One day Roman while on the yard doing clean up duty he notices an angry mustang corralled up in the prison grounds. The prison has a program where wild mustangs are wrangled up in the desert and then housed on the prison grounds to be trained by the inmates as part of a rehabilitation program for a select few inmates for their eventual auction to the federal government for border patrol. Roman is observed showing a keen interest in the wild horse named “Marcus” and is quickly encouraged by the horseman in charge “Myles” (Bruce Dern) to get into the training program.

REVIEW: Running a brief 96 minutes, “The Mustang” overall is decent enough to watch. It is solid and pretty consistent in its pacing throughout. But early on you sense while the movie is obviously taking you down a path for that mutual moment where both the wild caged man and the wild caged horse would heal each from the repetitive exercises of training, mutual trust and discipline; the overall effect of their journey to get to their healing was way too slow, tedious and pedestrian to experience. The fact is instead of me having an empathetic moment of joy for their mutual redemption, it felt like the full measure of their new emotional bond wasn’t completely told. As if something else (not explored) was still simmering underneath the surface and not fully realized.

“The Mustang” is well intentioned by wanting to boldly examine the realities of incarceration, animal captivity and healing, but for me the film only managed to remind that being in prison in general is simply not a place to be period……. under any circumstances………..whether one is training horses, cats, dogs or not.

2.75 Stars