Buck (PG)

Legendary horse trainer Buck Brannaman… tours the world giving clinics on starting colts, using a method of firm but sensitive nonverbal instruction that one rancher admiringly calls voodoo. Brannamans entire philosophy of how horses mirror the psychology and insecurities of their owners… stems from the merciless brutality that he and his brother experienced in childhood, at the hands of an alcoholic father, an experience that informs his entire feel for managing equine fear. It must be admitted: this guys instinctively empathic way with animals is uncanny. [Filmmaker Cindy] Meehl tracks Buck (a former child-celebrity trick roper who made numerous TV appearances after he went pro at age six) from Montana to the Carolinas as he calmly tames one unmountable wild thing after another with nothing more than a lead rope and a couple of flags, spinning stories and bracing bits of wisdom for his audiences, while matter-of-factly confiding to Meehls camera the gruesome facts of his youth.