“The Mustang,” tells the story of Roman Coleman, a violent convict, who is given the chance to participate in a rehabilitation therapy program involving the training of wild mustangs.
“The Mustang” tells the story of a hardened convict, Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts), who is serving time in a prison in Nevada for killing another person in a moment of rage years earlier. As someone who he himself exclaims, “is not good with other people,” you quickly learn that this is true. Constantly getting into fights so he can stay out of general population, Roman spends his days confined to a 6ft x 8ft solitary cell with no furnishings and no services at all. When his younger sister Martha (Gideon Adlon) visits him one day, she is distant and emotionally detached. She brings with her paperwork she needs Roman to sign, the deed to the house their grandmother left to them in her will. He reminds her that it is “their” house but she tells him that she has a new man in her life and is pregnant with his child and wants to move out of state as he has been offered a job in another city. Selling the house would give them extra cash for their family but Roman refuses to sign and tells her to never visit him again.
Shortly thereafter, he is given the opportunity to join a rehabilitation program that the prison offers to inmates which would involve him working with and taming wild mustangs that would eventually be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the prison rodeo. The program helps the Bureau of Land Management as it deals with the overpopulation of mustangs and wild burros in the Western states that total over 100,000. Initially, Roman is somewhat hesitant, and he has every right to be. The 800lb wild mustang he is assigned to train is scared, high-strung, and incredibly self-confident from having to survive on its own in the wild. As a man who expects immediate results, Roman is not prepared for the long days where sometimes absolutely nothing gets done. In one unintentionally funny scene, after his sister unexpectedly comes to visit him again, causing him to have a violent outburst, he jumps into the pen and when the horse doesn’t respond to his commands, he lunges towards it, punching it in the ribs and back, until it kicks him to the ground. Myles (Bruce Dern), the program director, has Roman removed from the pen and tells him he will never be welcome back.
Returned to solitary once more, Roman is able to peek outside his tiny window every day to see his horse running around the pen. Regretting his actions, through his inside connections, he orders books and magazines on how to train and handle wild mustangs and when a big thunderstorm threatens the prison one night, he is summoned to the corral, along with many of the other inmates, to help round up the horses and bring them inside. With no one able to move Roman’s horse, he enters the pen himself and he is able to quiet him down enough so that he can move him indoors along with all of the other mustangs. The next day, Myles welcomes Roman back into the program after having seen him in action the night before and with the rodeo date looming closer and closer, Roman does everything he can to try to get him to heed his commands but it all seems hopeless. In the most touching part of the movie, out of sheer desperation, Roman sits down inside the pen in tears, frustrated with his lack of coaching abilities only to have the horse slowly come over to him and rest its head on his shoulder. In this moment, both man and horse come to respect and appreciate each other and gradually, they become inseparable.
“The Mustang” isn’t a straightforward narrative, like most movies, because it doesn’t just concentrate on Roman, it also tells the story of his horse and the other horses and their lives and fates yet to come. Matthias Schoenaerts is a terrific character actor who has appeared in such films as “Red Sparrow,” “The Danish Girl,” and “Far from the Madding Crowd” but with “The Mustang,” he proves that he is a leading actor whose star is on the rise. For most of the film, he says nothing, conveying everything through facial expressions and physical idiosyncrasies and for an actor to spend most of a movie’s runtime displaying such a broad range of emotions, is quite a feat. Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre has created an emotionally-fueled story about two wild creatures and their need for love and acceptance, no matter what their exterior says about them. As the relationship between Roman and his horse develops, so does the strained relationship with his sister. In a touching and poignant scene, he finally tells her what happened on the fateful day he took another person’s life, someone they both knew, and with little to no dialogue, you genuinely feel for him as you realize he’s never told another human being what happened until now. His ruthless, hardened veneer cracks as we realize that he is beyond sorry for what he did but willingly accepts his fate. “The Mustang” is a slow-burning drama filled with exceptional performances and deft direction and is definitely a must-see.
Opens in theaters Friday, March 22nd
