The Wild Horse Redemption is one of the few instances of a documentary made about convicts that I enjoy. Most, along the lines of the filler content on MSNBC these days, make you feel trapped "on the inside" with them. This one frees you instead of trapping you. It's uplifting

I've been doing SXSW with my wife for the last two years, and whereas there are spots in the schedule where I say "you pick" and she invariably chooses something I'm not terribly interested in but then end up enjoying, I circled this one immediately after reading the synopsis of my own accord.

This review is short, but please do not read into that length a statement on the doc's quality. Anthropologically, the individual convicts the film focuses on have interesting personal stories that lead to a very interesting case study overall, especially parallel to the wild mustangs they help train. A guy who just can't get his act together, a guy whose life is irrevocably improved by the program, and an African American guy just starting his journey with it are the ones that stood out the most for me.

The only thing I could have done without were a lot of the music choices that took me out of the experience, but honestly it could be due to spending my life thus far hating the living daylights out of the twangy inspirational/semi-spiritual western music that make up the majority of the cues they use. That in and of itself isn't a reason to avoid seeing it though.

The Wild Horse Redemption plays on Sundance this May and later this year on Animal Planet.