- The Guardian
10 Friday 30 August 2019
The Mustang
★★★★☆
Dir Laure de Clermont-TonnerreStarring Matthias Schoenaerts,
Bruce Dern, Jason MitchellDur 97mins Cert 15Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s
impressive directing debut is a
grounded, gutsy drama set in
a maximum-security prison in
Nevada where violent prisoners
bond with wild mustangs as part of
a rehabilitation programme. Her fi lm
manages to be inspirational without
going Disney.
“This is a particularly crazed
one,” growls a rancher about a horse
charging into the prison’s corral.
Or perhaps he’s talking about the
off ender tasked with taming the
horse : Roman, a shaven headed
wardrobe of a man played with
frightening intensity by the Belgian
actor Matthias Schoenaerts.
The prison detail is grittily
documentary-like – fi lthy broom-
cupboard-sized cells shared by
two big angry men. The mustang
programme is run by old-timer
rancher Myles (Bruce Dern). Romanis one of a dozen or so prisoners
given 12 weeks to break in a mustang- “gentling” is the word Myles uses
- but before he can tame his horse
Roman must fi rst learn to control
his temper. He has spent 12 years
behind bars, and long stretches in
solitary confi nement for violent
outbursts. Brilliantly, Schoenaerts
almost underplays Roman’s anger,
lumbering slowly like a wounded
animal, the downward slope of his
eyes conveying a howl of rage. It’s an
electrifying performance.
The Mustang is executive-
produced by Robert Redford ; had
he been directing, it would perhaps
A Million Little Pieces
★★☆☆☆
Dir Sam Taylor-Johnson
Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson,
Charlie Hunnam, Juliette Lewis
Dur 112mins Cert 15
Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson
preface their adaptation of James
Frey’s mega-selling memoir about
his addiction and recovery with
a Mark Twain quote : “I’ve lived
through some terrible things in
my life, some of which actually
happened.” A little nod there to the
controversy surrounding Frey’s
admission that he fabricated chunks
of his 2003 book. The Taylor-
Johnsons co-wrote the script , with
Sam directing and Aaron giving a
lightweight, sanitised performance
as Frey. The result is like buying
sham weed. You wait for something
to happen, but ... nothing.
It opens on a euphoric high, with
a beautiful scene as Frey dances naked
on crack to the Smashing Pumpkins.
Stopping to light up a cigarette, he
falls off a balcony and smashes up his
face. At a rehab centre, he is informed
he’s one drink away from death;
the unit has never seen someone so
young with such knackered organs.
Except the unfeasibly unravaged
Taylor-Johnson, with his luminous
skin and bulked up biceps , looks
like he’s spent the week with his
personal trainer rather than face
down in a crack den.
Frey, with his self-conscious ly
macho prose, reinvented himself in
the book as a tough guy; Hemingway
with a crackpipe. Taylor-Johnson
showily trashes a room or two,
but with his puppy ish openness
plays Frey as good kid who went off
the rails, with no inkling as to the
emotional problems that messed
him up. A Million Little Pieces is a
weirdly unrefl ective exploration of
the destructive force of addiction
and, setting a new benchmark for
blandness, drags on for what feels
like a million not-so-little minutes.
Cath ClarkeReviews Film
have closed with a shot of man and
beast clopping off into the sunset
in a honeyed glow of redemption.
Instead, Clermont-Tonnerre, who
spent fi ve years researching at a
real-life programme in Nevada,
discloses late on a troubling detail
of Roman’s off ence. For me, her fi lm
brought to mind Kathryn Bigelow,
another master of depicting
male violence without macho
sentimentality. As for Schoenaerts,
The Mustang may well signal his
transition from European cinema’s
fi rst choice for fully-dimensional
psychopaths to Hollywood fi xture.
Cath ClarkeRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws