Spirit Untamed

Spirit Untamed is a story of courageous young women and their beloved horses who risk everything to do the right thing.

When Lucky a young society girl moves West to join her estranged father she starts a new chapter in her life makes new friends and forms an unbreakable bond with a wild stallion she names Spirit.

Together the girls and their horses undertake the adventure of a lifetime when they must save the stallion's herd from a gang of horse wranglers proving to themselves to be true Western heroes.

Official Trailer - Spirit Untamed

Review: Spirit Untamed

HORSES in kids' movies are often healers or parent substitutes helping out young people in an emotional crisis. Spirit Untamed arrives in the tradition of My Friend Flicka and The Black Stallion and while no-one would ever mistake it for a classic it's not without its simple heartfelt appeal.

The movie begins with the tragic death (not shown) of Milagro a stunt-horse rider somewhere in the American West in the middle of a show while her stunned husband looks on with their baby in his arms.

A few years later Milagro's daughter Lucky (voiced by Isabela Merced) is a tempestuous girl causing headaches for her rail-magnate grandfather who exiles Lucky with her long-suffering Aunt Cora (Julianne Moore) to a frontier town to be reunited with her estranged emotionally damaged father Jim (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Unlike her mum Lucky hasn't had much to do with horses but on the rail journey she's mesmerised by the sight of a herd of wild mustangs giving chase to the train.

On arrival in Miradero Lucky happens to see one of the animals being brutalised by a team of wranglers led by the oafish baddie Hendricks (Walton Goggins) and something compels her to act.

Spirit Untamed is adapted from the animated Netflix series Spirit Riding Free condensing the material and amplifying its emotional beats. They've splashed the cash not just on getting some big names for the voice cast but also on the animation itself. It looks beautiful on the big screen.

Refreshingly the old-fashioned adventure story approach never becomes glib even though the introduction of horse-loving best friends Pru (Marsai Martin) and Abigail (Mckenna Grace) brings with it a few wisecracks.

There are poetic touches too. Lucky's absent mother haunts the edges of the film in exhilarating shots of wild horses tearing across the prairies and in the image of a girl riding on a horse in a zoetrope that Lucky fi nds hidden away in her father's house.

The movie takes place in a kind of domesticated version of the old American West. There are no phones cars or TVs so it can't be modern day but also none of the gunfi ghts suffering racism and sexism that usually drive frontier narratives. It's a perfectly safe setting in short for a story of courage family and belonging for the little ones.

Spirit Untamed is now screening in cinemas. Vicky Roach is on leave.

Review by NICK DENT from the June 13 2021 issue of The Herald Sun Digital Edition. To subscribe visit https://www.heraldsun.com.au/.