Mark Reviews Movies: THE MUSTANG

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 28, 2019

There's always a bit of danger in a narrative that directly compares a person to an animal—especially a person or a type of person who is already judged by society. Human beings are animals, of course, but you can understand the distinction, because that ability to comprehend such a concept—that we are unique among animals—is part of what makes us human in the first place. The Mustang does compare a prison inmate to a wild animal, but the screenplay by director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Mona Fastvold, and Brock Norman Brock is very careful in making that comparison.

This view is not generalized. We are not intended to believe that all prisoners are akin to some lower form of life, somehow incapable of existing as people—or unwilling to do so. It's a very specific link, between one animal and one particular inmate. The animal itself may be wild, but it's only dangerous under certain circumstances, such as being backed into a corner or being kept in captivity without any means escape. The animal, as one probably has guessed from the film's title, is a mustang.

Those horses still roam free on the plains of the American West, the film's opening text informs us. Perhaps, in the minds of some, they roam too freely, and the text continues that the population of the breed is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. Numbers of them are rounded up every so often, to be held in captivity or to be sold to people. It's one of those strange contradictions: We love the concept of freedom and the old frontier spirit that these horses represent, yet that freedom is enough of a hassle for certain people that this is the fate for the wild mustang. The freedom of any given horse is simply a matter of random forces beyond its control and comprehension.

This idea makes the mustang a fitting metaphor for the man at the center of the story. When we first meet Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts), who has become so entrenched in the criminal justice system that he instinctually introduces his name in reverse on the rare occasion that anyone asks, his face is like a stone. Twelve years in prison can do that a person. In his initial appearance here, Roman is talking to the prison's psychologist (played by Connie Britton), although it's better to say that he's being talked to by the psychologist. Roman offers no responses to the questions on her psychological evaluation, save for some heavy breathing and a one-word affirmative when she asks if he cares about his freedom.

Roman, we learn, has spent a good portion of his incarceration in isolation. It's the first suggestion that, beneath the quiet demeanor and blank face, there is more than just the capacity for violence within this man. After being transferred to a state prison in Nevada, Roman is set to be sent to general population. He isn't one for people, Roman tells the psychologist, but he has no say in this matter.

Assigned to outside maintenance work at the prison's mustang ranch, Roman catches the attention one horse, which has been deemed to be too dangerous to be kept with the others, and Myles (Bruce Dern), who runs the prison's horse-training program. That program—a real one, as the opening text affirms—gives inmates an opportunity to train mustangs, which are later auctioned off to various law-enforcement agencies. The old rancher spots Roman's curiosity for the isolated mustang, which seems to calm whenever the prisoner approaches, and tells him that he will train the horse—if he's able to spend five seconds in a pen with it.

The film tells a very simple story about a man, prone to violence without much—if any—warning, who comes to see himself in a wild horse and, gradually, learns what sets him apart from the animal. There are unexpected layers to this character, who seems to want to control his outbursts of rage, only to find himself becoming enraged by that lack of control over his impulses. He receives occasional visits from his pregnant teenage daughter Martha (Gideon Adlon), who wants legal emancipation from her father in order to pursue her own life, and that relationship, strained by years of separation and equal resentment (He is clearly upset that her visits have become infrequent, and she has had to face the consequences of the reason he's in prison), serves as a sort of litmus test for Roman's progress.

His crime isn't revealed until later in the story—perhaps so we're not tempted to judge the man before we get a chance to see him as he is and as he could be. The reveal arrives after a group therapy session, in which Roman and fellow inmates discuss just how little time—a matter of seconds or less—there was between the thought of their respective crimes and actually committing them.

Just as training a wild horse comes down to a matter of understanding the animal's feelings and controlling one's own, Roman's rehabilitation is in understanding to control his impulses and in recognizing that other people are affected by his inability to do so. The minimal plot has that gradual understanding put to the test, as Roman tries to calm his frustration with the stubborn mustang and resolve his participation in a drug-smuggling scheme, which he is coerced into by his cellmate (played by Josh Stewart).

It's an empathetic story, bolstered by Schoenaerts' subtly revelatory performance. The Mustang isn't about Roman earning his freedom through his reformation. It's about the reformation itself, which is in understanding that others—including a wild horse—deserve freedom as much as he believes he does.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)

Buy the DVD

Buy the Blu-ray