War Pony starts with a scene designed to trip you up. As the film opens, we witness a slow and deliberate smoke ritual done out in the plains by an elder of the Oglala Lakota reservation that most of the story takes place on. It feels ancient, tied to long-held traditions, but is pretty much the only scene of the movie that chases this. The rest of War Pony is a much more hard-bitten ‘Serious Indie Film’ affair, a story of poverty and struggle in the middle of America – a story that frequently feels predictable, even stale, but is elevated by an absolute dynamo of a lead character.
This hero is Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), a young and slightly awkward Oglala Lakota man whose unflappable calmness and sincere desire to just care for something – be it his girlfriend, his kids, or his dog – powers all the best stuff in War Pony. He might launch into an ill-advised scheme now and then, but it’s always in service of a smart and well-intentioned grand plan. Combined with the astoundingly charming performance from Whiting, it makes for someone you can’t help but totally root for on his quest to buy and breed a poodle and start his own puppy-selling business.
The work done with Bill is the best part of the script from Native writers Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, a character that feels genuinely fresh even as much of the film around him goes down a more generically gritty path. Bill shares his screentime – though very rarely the actual screen – with the more troubled Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder), a middle-schooler who steals his dad’s drugs to fund fruitless escapades with his buddies. Though he’s brought to life by a crackerjack performance, Matho’s story almost always feels like you’ve seen it before in any other earnest American indie about poverty – there’s none of the unique plotting of, say, Sean Baker here.
In fact, the most obvious touchpoint is Andrea Arnold’s American Honey – no surprise given that this acts as the directorial debut of Riley Keough (alongside co-director Gina Gammell). There’s a lot of that film’s sense of a wilfully forgotten America, though much less of Arnold’s incredible capacity for controlled chaos. War Pony is hardly a formally ambitious piece and the perhaps obvious comparison to Chloe Zhao’s first two films – Songs My Brothers Taught Me and the peerless The Rider – serve to highlight the lack of lyricism in the filmmaking here.
Still, it all comes good for a satisfyingly bittersweet ending which is, of course, brought about by the charms and good will of Bill. As portrayed by Whiting, he’s one of the best single characters of 2023 and if the rest of the film around him could capture that same magic, we’d be on to something very special. As it stands, though, War Pony is a flawed but affecting piece that should at least launch Whiting – who, somehow, is making his screen debut here – into a hell of a career. Given the often woeful opportunities provided to indigenous actors by Hollywood, that is a longer shot than it should be, but we can live in hope.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 