WAR PONY - Mark Reviews Movies

War Pony, Momentum Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 27, 2023

War Pony details the lives of a young man and a boy on a Native American reservation. The feature debut of co-directors Gina Gammell and Riley Keough skirts close to generalizing these lives and experiences as ones of despair and hopelessness, but in keeping the focus on the specifics of these two characters, the film remains an isolated study of the ease of falling into self-destructive behavior and the difficulty of escaping from that pattern.

The young man is Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), who is in his 20s and is an unreliable father to two sons by two different mothers. Bill is a natural and skilled charmer. He's the kind of guy who could do things with his life under other circumstances, but without a job and still living with his mother, the guy just finds himself living a day-to-day, minute-by-minute existence. The charm helps him almost pull off a series of hustles, but his ambition gets in the way, too.

His story revolves around a few concerns for him at the moment. For one thing, the mother of his first child is currently in county lockup on account of some traffic tickets, and while she wants him to get money to pay her bail, Bill decides to use it to buy a poodle with the hopes that breeding the dog could earn him a lot of cash. Meanwhile, he also talks himself into working for Tim (Sprague Hollander), a successful turkey farmer, who also needs Bill to chauffer his mistress from and to the reservation.

The kid is Matho (LaDaninian Crazy Thunder), who finds methamphetamine in his home and starts selling drugs. That leads him to be kicked out of home after home, until he's on his own and enjoying the freedom more than a bit too much.

Despite the complications of Bill's hustling and Matho's descent toward a secluded life, the story, obviously, is simple in this screenplay, written by the directors, as well as Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. That's of little matter.

The propulsive energy of Bill's tale, as he makes things worse for himself and those around him as he becomes increasingly convinced that he somehow has a handle on everything, and the mounting fear that Matho isn't nearly old enough to realize the mess into he's getting himself are enough. The two lead performances, played by non-professional actors from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where the film is set, are compelling in their naturalism, too.

Gammell and Keough don't judge these characters (In fact, there's almost a sense of admiration for Bill's abilities and his potential for compassion, although it takes a lot for him to realize how the one suppresses the other). They merely observe in War Pony, finding connections between the young man and the boy of how and why they are as they are. They don't see it, of course, being so entrenched in themselves, but we get to in finely considered detail.

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