WILD LIKE ME

Here is the decision, and it's an easy one. This is a warm, God-centered documentary about Arizona prison inmates who are changed by training wild mustangs — and it earns its emotion honestly. The faith is not decoration; it's the beating heart of the thing. Bible verses appear on screen, "Amazing Grace" plays, a prayer goes up in the name of Jesus, and men speak plainly about surrendering to God.

The only thing to weigh is the subject matter. These are real men with real pasts — some involving murder and manslaughter, addiction, and dysfunctional families — and they speak about it openly. But every word is offered in a spirit of repentance and a hunger to do good. There's no foul language, no sex, no nudity.

So if you want a film that shows transformation instead of just talking about it, watch this one. Older children can handle it with you; younger ones may find the testimony over their heads.

Arizona's outback holds more wild horses than the land can feed. To keep the herds from starving, someone has to thin them — and a prison decided to help.

The program is simple and audacious: let inmates train the wild mustangs and find them homes. Their trainer is a chaplain, and as he teaches these men to gentle a stubborn, untrusting animal, they begin to see themselves in the horse. Man and horse, it turns out, need much the same thing. What happens next is why the film exists.

Three stars, and here's what they mean. This is not a flashy documentary — it moves at a leisurely pace, and viewers hoping for constant momentum should know that going in. What it does instead is build. Director Ricky Norris lets the inmates speak directly to us about their lives, and that intimacy is the film's great strength.

The patience pays off. By the end, the documentary reaches several quietly powerful emotional moments, and the interaction between the men and the horses genuinely changes both. It's personal, sincere, and unhurried — a film that trusts real stories to carry their own weight, and they do.

This documentary wears its Christian, biblical worldview openly, and it shines for it. God and the Bible are present throughout — Isaiah 61:1 shown prominently, "Amazing Grace" over the soundtrack, a prayer in the name of Jesus. The inmates themselves talk about God as a healer and about surrendering to Him. One program manager tells of becoming a Christian during the "Jesus Movement" of 1970s Southern California.

Redemption is the film's whole subject, and it's displayed wonderfully. Men filled with regret and pain find, in the patient work of training a wild animal, a way to process and overcome what haunts them. Along the way they learn to master their anger — lose your temper on a stubborn horse and you're out of the program.

The chaplain's herd analogy is the film's sharpest insight. A trained horse released back among wild ones quickly reverts to its old ways. So too a changed man: return to the old crowd and the old habits return with them. The film names finding purpose as the antidote — a purpose rooted in God.

That warning is straight from Scripture: "Bad company corrupts good character" (1 Corinthians 15:33). And the deeper promise the film rests on is older still — that the Lord came "to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives" (Isaiah 61:1).

This is the kind of film that reminds you what documentaries can do: sit patiently with real people until grace becomes visible. There's no cynicism here, no sensationalism — just broken men, stubborn horses, and a God who gentles both. Slow to start, but it lands where it matters. That's why it's worth watching.