YOUNG BLACK STALLION

If your family loves horses, beautiful landscapes, and stories of courage, Young Black Stallion is worth the trip. Its photography is superb, and the horse sequences are captivating. The film also offers positive moral themes, including compassion, friendship, turning the other cheek, and love overcoming adversity.

The main moral flaw is Neera’s disobedience to her grandfather. She does apologize, but the apology is perfunctory. The grandfather’s delight in forgiving her provides a gracious counterpoint.

At only 51 minutes, the movie goes by too quickly, and the children’s dialogue is weak. Still, the visual storytelling is strong enough to win applause. Take your children and horse-loving friends to see it.

In North Africa in 1946, a young girl named Neera survives a bandit attack in the desert and befriends a black stallion. When she finally returns home, she discovers that her family has lost nearly everything, including its stable of winning horses.

Neera believes the stallion can help restore her family’s fortune through an annual horserace. But entering the race means defying her grandfather and placing what little the family has left on one extraordinary horse.

Three stars means this is a good, captivating film with real visual strengths but noticeable weaknesses. The photography is superb, and the horse sequences are especially compelling. Like the first movie, it relies heavily on visual storytelling, and that approach works well here.

The movie’s brevity makes it feel rushed. The two children are not as strong in dialogue as the horse is on screen, although there is very little dialogue overall. Still, the visual storytelling is so effective that audiences applauded at the end.

The film presents a moral worldview set in a Muslim culture. Its North African setting and its effort to reach out to Muslims and Arabs are part of the work’s identity. The story presents tribal law and family authority as important realities in Neera’s world.

The movie exalts courage, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, and love overcoming adversity. It also shows a grandfather delighting in forgiving Neera after her disobedience. The film’s moral weakness is that Neera disobeys her grandfather and offers only a perfunctory apology. Its content also includes discussions of the Devil, along with stealing, lying, and tribal law.

The film’s central themes of courage, compassion, forgiveness, and love overcoming adversity align with biblical virtues. Scripture says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Young Black Stallion is a visually beautiful, captivating adventure with strong themes of courage, friendship, compassion, and forgiveness. Its weak dialogue, rushed length, and Neera’s disobedience keep it from matching the first movie, but families who love horses should enjoy it. WORTH THE TRIP.