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The Mustang Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
Talent: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Mitchell, Bruce Dern Released: 30 August Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Director: Quentin Tarantino Talent: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie Released: 14 August There’s nothing really new about the ‘man in prison seeking redemption’ film or the ‘man bonds with horse’ film but entwined with Matthias Schoenaerts at the helm, The Mustang makes for an engrossing watch regardless. Following a fine 2017 double helping of equine dramas - Lean on Pete and The Rider - The Mustang is perhaps a more straightforward film than those two. Matthais’s Roman needs to fill out time. He has a life sentence to do it. He is listed to participate in a rehabilitation therapy programme centred around the training of wild mustang. Each man has six weeks to break their horse before they are auctioned off. There are, of course, complications and two smaller subplots but, by and large, The Mustang never veers off its set course and it’s all the better for it. This is a steady and assured debut guided with a mature hand by de Clermont-Tonnerre. Schoenaerts is the star of the show; a man who looks the part, all bundled intensity and seething fight and rage. His taming in conjunction with the feisty mustang is a worthy struggle on the screen and the two make sense as a pairing. The Mustang is a fascinating film to watch and its back story, based on a current and apparently very effective prison therapy programme, makes it even more so. Not every film has to be cast out as a truly original idea to prevail these days. As long as the project is sincere and the route taken objectively works, then I’m all for it. This is a meaty bit of drama and a fine addition to the succession of man and beast partnerships on screen. SOR Whatever you might think of Quentin Tarantino, no cinephile can ignore his releases. Still, his back catalogue has got increasingly trivial and self-indulgent in the last 20 years. Has this new film that also melds fact and fiction cracked the code and found the right balance between substance and silly mischief? Yes, but it’s a qualified yes. There are problems: stretches of the movie are straightforwardly boring – think that one aimless scene in Pulp Fiction when Keitel pointlessly introduces his daughter; there are many such scenes here. We’re subjected to long scenes of DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton acting, which are funny but lack narrative drive. The dawdling pace can be pleasurable, but the film is baggy and overlong. That said, these feel like real flesh-and-blood characters. While DiCaprio’s tantrums are played for laughs, there’s something affecting about this erstwhile star Rick Dalton’s anxiety about becoming a hasbeen – could there be a hint of autobiography here for QT? Pitt puts in an amiable performance, happily playing second-fiddle to Dalton as his stunt double, less prone to disappointment as he never strained to aim so high. And Robbie, as Sharon Tate, is low-key and charmingly guileless, taking pleasure in her own success, as the Manson family narrows in. This being QT, naturally, there’s explosive, cathartic violence which will incite handwringing from bores. The closing sequence is a blast that invigorates as much as it makes you squirm, both glorious and stupid all at once. Good to have the semi-mature QT back. Now, let’s just hope he doesn’t try to re-write the history of 9/11 with Samurais. RK 77