The Mustang *** (2019, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Mitchell, Bruce Dern, Gideon Adlon, Connie Britton) – Movie Review

Co-writer/ director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s appealing and moving 2019 drama The Mustang stars Matthias Schoenaerts as jailed violent convict Roman Coleman, given the chance in prison to participate in Bruce Dern’s rehabilitation therapy programme training of wild mustangs.

The Mustang is a nice, quiet, slow, thoughtful, warm, reflective movie of the kind they once made in the Seventies but are wildly out of fashion. It is full to overflowing of good will and liberal values, a little bit soft hearted but not too much. It is laid back, relaxed and unsurprising, but still engrossing and compelling. There is some strong language, some violence and drug misuse content, but, for a prison story, it is very light on these.

The Mustang is well crafted and convincing, and there’s a great part for Schoenaerts, who grabs it earnestly and credibly, winning you over as he struggles with words and emotions, and to connect with people, though less so with the mustang he calls Marcus. Obviously, as the tagline says, horse and man are ‘untamed souls and kindred spirits.’

Schoenaerts has virtually the whole show to himself, but Dern is very effective, with just enough to do, and so are Jason Mitchell, Gideon Adlon, Connie Britton as fellow prisoner Henry, Roman’s estranged daughter Martha, and the prison psychologist.

Ruben Impens’s cinematography and Jed Kurzel’s score are unusual and help to create the mood and atmosphere that Clermont-Tonnerre tries painstakingly to build.

It is Clermont-Tonnerre’s feature film directorial debut, based on her short film Rabbit (2014), about a female prisoner entrusted with the mustang as part of a correctional facility’s ‘pet partnership’ programme, and developing it through the Sundance Labs. She received the Sundance Institute Award for the project in 2015.

The executive producer is the admirable Robert Redford. What is it about him and horses?: The Electric Horseman, The Horse Whisperer.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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