Riley Keogh

War Pony

06/06/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

War Pony makes for harrowing viewing. Set – and filmed – on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, it chronicles the everyday lives of the resident tribe, the Lakota. It’s clear from the outset that their traditional way of life has all but disappeared, brought out only occasionally in a splash of sound and colour to entertain the tourists. The film focuses mostly on the lives of two young men, who are trying their best to deal with the blows that their existence throws at them.

Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder) is perhaps twelve years old, living with his father, a meth dealer. A bit of a dreamer, Matho drifts aimlessly through school, preferring to read an obscure book about magic that he carries with him everywhere than to focus on the curriculum. By night, he and his four best friends run amok around the reservation, making drug deals, getting wasted and generally causing mayhem. After a violent row with his father over some pilfered drugs, Matho is kicked out and winds up bunking in the home of another dealer. But then his father dies under suspicious circumstances (something Matho may have inadvertently caused) and now he must fend for himself any way he can.

Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is in his twenties, already the father of two sons (to two different women, one of whom is in jail). He gets by with a sleepy grin and a relaxed WTF manner, but he too has to wheel and deal to make ends meet. In his world, everything has a price and, when he finally hits on his game plan, it’s fairly unconventional. He will purchase a female poodle and become a dog breeder, selling the resulting puppies for big profits. Meanwhile, a chance encounter with a local white farmer leads to him obtaining a paid position – not bad for a kid from the ‘res’.

But unfortunately, part of that job is to act as a chauffeur to the various young Native American girls whom his new employer likes to sleep with…

Though the two lead characters have nothing in common and only meet in one brief scene, the film is quick to point out that Matho is somehow already in rehearsal to be exactly like Bill one day, provided he manages to survive long enough. The repeated (unexplained) reappearance of a bison, the creature around which the Lakota’s lifestyle once centred, strikes a powerful and thought-provoking element. The creature no longer has any place here: he has become an almost surreal symbol of a lost identity, just as Matho and Bill too, are stranded. The latter no longer even knows how to speak his own language.

Utilising a cast of mostly non-professionals and written by Native Americans, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy – in collaboration with directors Riley Keogh and Gina Gammell – War Pony feels totally authentic, a gritty and realistic piece that highlights the plight of a displaced people with absolute authority. Though there are occasional snatches of humour in the twists and turns of the story, most of what happens to the characters here is profoundly distressing.

But this is an important story that deserves to be seen by big audiences and the sizeable crowds at this Unlimited screening suggests that there are plenty of people ready and willing to watch it.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Guilty

01/10/21

Netflix

Director Antoine Fuqua has previous form with cop movies. 2001 ‘s Training Day brought Denzel Washington a well-deserved Oscar, while End of Watch (2012), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, was also a memorable addition to the genre. Gyllenhaal returns in this riveting slice of drama, a remake of a Danish movie of the same name. Here he’s Joe Baylor, currently relieved of his usual duties as an L.A. street cop – for reasons that will eventually be revealed – and demoted to handing emergency calls in the midst of a catastrophic wildfire, which is straining emergency services to the limit.

Baylor is edgy and unpredictable. He’s suffering from asthma and going through the throes of a painful separation from his wife and young daughter. He’s also nervous about an important court appearance he’ll be making the following morning. But, for now, he has an important job to do and, when he receives a panicked call from Emily (voiced by Riley Keogh), he goes straight into protective mode, trying to find a way to get her away from her husband, Henry (Peter Sarsgaard), who has her locked in the back of a speeding van. In the process of his enquiries, Baylor also discovers that the couple have two young children left alone at home…

The Guilty is essentially a one-hander, with Gyllenhaal onscreen throughout. Though the hard scrabble bustle of the emergency room is fully realised, his supporting actors are relegated to background roles or appear simply as disembodied voices on phone lines. Given this approach, it’s remarkable that the film manages to generate almost unbearable levels of suspense as Fuqua steadily racks up the peril and the potential repercussions of Baylor’s actions. It’s not until the halfway point that we start to fully appreciate something worrying. Baylor may not be handling the situation as well as he could. Perhaps he’s letting his instincts overrule his common sense.

Gyllenhaal submits a stellar performance here, making us fully appreciate the complexities of this flawed character and pulling us further and further into his troubled world. Ultimately, the only thing that lets The Guilty down is the film’s conclusion, which seems unwilling to embrace the full enormity of what lies behind Baylor’s impending court case – and there’s an unlikely late development that slightly defuses the film’s power. Screenwriter Nic Pizolatto should have had the guts to step up to an unpalatable truth, which would make this story more hard-hitting.

That said, The Guilty is one of those rare creatures (along with Buried and Locke), a filmed monologue that fully deserves its place on the big screen. Though of course, as a Netflix film, the size of the screen will depend on whatever you have to view it on.

3.9 stars

Philip Caveney