'The Mustang' Review: Schoenaerts Shines in a Tame Wild Horse Story

Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “The Mustang” starts off in a remarkably similar way to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”: impressionistic and quietly beautiful images of animals roaming in the wild. In the former’s case, horses, while Kubrick uses leopards and apes. The roaming and jump-cutting continues until it is interrupted by an alien object. In “The Mustang”: a helicopter, here to herd the wild animals into captivity; in “2001”, a black monolith.

The similarities stop there. Where the most human character in “2001” was a machine, the central character of “The Mustang” is as human as they come. Played with poise and fury by Matthias Schoenaerts, Roman is a prisoner who is placed in a program where inmates tame wild horses.

Due to some of the inherent tropes of the man-meets-horse tale, Roman will of course end up trying to subdue the most wild of all the horses, and the two will become friends. The ending is just as predictable.

But what keeps “The Mustang” from becoming your average prison drama are the performances, photography, and the obvious heart that was poured into the film.

Schoenaerts skills cannot be underestimated. Everything about his performance works; his body language, terse speaking style, and reddened eyes lend a contrived story a degree of authenticity.

Bruce Dern, as the peckish boss of the program, Myles, steals every scene he’s in. Dern is amusing and grisled.

Alas, there are several actors too hamstringed by their roles to do much. Among them are Jason Mitchell as the jokester and Connie Britton as the counselor. Both are shoehorned into rote roles that they can’t do much with, even given their best effort. Finally, Gideon Adlon, as Roman’s pregnant daughter, is handed terribly on-the-nose dialogue, and her droll delivery doesn’t help ease the painfully manipulative words on the page.

While a large portion of the film is shot in formulaic “indie-movie style” (tight close-ups, behind the back shots, simple but effective visual storytelling), cinematographer Ruben Impens excels with his horse photography. He films them with an eye for the bold, the beautiful, and everything in between. The occasional uses of slow motion are welcome as well.

De Clermont-Tonnerre ultimately crafts an engaging story with straightforward editing and an easy-to-follow visual language. “The Mustang” works best when it is sparse, and lets its actors do their thing. It might not be more than a man-meets-beast tale, but it’s a damn good one.

{★★★☆}