Title: Buck

Opens: June 17, 2011

From what a member of the audience said, the Mayor’s Department of Tourism indicates that most domestic visitors to New York come from areas like Ohio, Connecticut, Wisconsin, California and a few other states, while Europeans who visit the Big Apple are generally from the larger cities on the Continent. This means that in areas of The Big Sky like Wyoming and Montana, residents would have little interest in Broadway and the Empire State Building and Macy’s. By the same turn, it’s likely that most big city people would have little interest in rodeos and virtually none in clinics in which people and horses get trained. If this is true, documentaries like Cindy Meehl’s “Buck” would be sought out more by people in cowboy land, even though the residents would already know about the subject matter, than by New Yorkers, who, you’d think, might really be curious about life on a different planet.

For these reasons I could respect the movie while at the same time would not be the type to seek it out-certainly not the way I would jump at the opportunity to see anything by Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. “Buck” is not simply about horses but a lot about the principal whisperer, Buck Brannaman, who expects to continue giving his clinics under the Big Sky in various places for forty weeks a year until he is 94 years old and beyond. It’s not difficult to see that his daughter and her best friend are among the horsey set as well, his teen girl already showing so much expertise at roping young cows while in the saddle that she is expected in time to outperform her dad.

Just a look at the landscapes ably photographed by Luke Geissbühler gives the viewer a perspective on the wide dimensions of the U.S., dimensions which people living in cramped New York apartment houses lose track of. This is the segment that Sarah Palin might call The Real America, not designed to win her many votes in my home town (though she may have written us off despite her recent visit to Donald Trump’s properties). It’s a land of seemingly infinite dirt and grass and barns indicating that the Marlboro Man is not yet a historical fossil.

Having been brutalized regularly by his late, alcoholic father (his mother had died), Buck Brannahan was determined to turn out in opposite ways, believing, no doubt, in the old saying “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” He is said to be able to sense every nuance of a horse, thereby gaining its trust readily, though one brown creature who was deprived of oxygen at birth turned out the equivalent of a disabled youngster. In the case of that equine, a decision is made by the owner to put him down as not even Buck could get very far with the animal. In fact the horse knocked a fellow rider to the ground and bit him in the head, giving him a gash that required stitches.

Midway through the picture we learn that Buck is not sui generis, but part of a movement that includes Robert Redford, who is introduced at midpoint with his retro, round eyeglasses. “Buck” is a movie that will play quite well in audiences out west, where rodeos are far more common than Broadway shows, but any area that falls under the influence of PETA will wince at the depiction of small cows being roped and dragged along the ground by humans on horseback.

Rated PG. 88 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall: B