Daisy Jones And The Six and Zola star Riley Keough steps behind the camera for her directorial debut alongside Gina Gammell with this spiky, engaging coming-of-age story. Inspired and co-written by her American Honey co-stars Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, after conversations between the trio on set of Andrea Arnold’s 2016 indie drama, it follows two young Oglala Lakota boys: Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) and Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder). The former is a reluctant dad and avid hustler who invests in a poodle he calls Beast, hoping that selling her puppies will bring him riches; the latter bridges the gap between childlike neediness and teenage bravado, causing chaos in the community and growing up way too fast.
Both acting newcomers, Bapteise Whiting and Crazy Thunder carry the film incredibly well, remaining sympathetic despite strings of bad decisions. Matho’s storyline is the more conventional of the two – a lack of familial support and oversight leads to escalating bad behaviour, trouble at school and a worsening homelife.
Bill’s narrative has more twists and turns. After giving farm owner Tim (Sprague Hollander) a lift home, Bill starts working for him in an attempt to get himself on more solid ground financially and become more of a family man. After Tim asks Bill to do some not-exactly-above-board errands, though, along with the introduction of his unnervingly smiley, blatantly racist wife Allison (Ashley Shelton), that soon goes south. Bill lashing back against his situation with increased emotional stakes makes for a high-impact closing act – a welcome bump in adrenaline after an interesting but deliberate, sometimes disjointed runtime up until then.
With such an impoverished, dog-eat-dog setting and many bleak plot points, War Pony can sink into a too-slow, overwhelmingly melancholy rhythm at times – but it’s punctuated by enough levity, tension, shocks and touching moments to keep you invested.