'Buck': Horse patience grew from harshness

Buck Brannaman, the subject of Cindy Meehl's documentary "Buck," is the inspiration for Tom Booker, the fictional hero of Nicholas Evans' 1995 novel "The Horse Whisperer," though his real fame arrived when Robert Redford adapted the book into a 1998 movie.

A guy could do worse than be immortalized on film by Redford, who played Booker/Buck as a handsome cowboy with a near-telepathic connection to four-legged animals. He also does pretty well with a two-legged female, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas). If it all seemed a bit romanticized, it helped to remember that the film contained at least a grain of truth.

Buck is that grain, as Meehl takes pains to show. Like a cowpoke Michael Jackson, Buck was a child star -- a trick-roper on the rodeo circuit -- who learned from a punishing, perfectionist father. The abuse was bad enough to leave welts across his legs and back; when a school football coach spotted them, Buck was taken from his father and put in foster care.

There's an implicit connection between Buck's history and his rapport with horses. As he travels across the country nine months of the year teaching horse clinics, he is clearly training the humans more than their animals. He preaches respect, kindness and patience. To the owner of one violent colt he says sternly, "This horse tells me quite a bit about you."

The movie doesn't draw these kinds of connections frequently or clearly enough, however. Watching Buck mentally lead a horse through a graceful dance can be truly magical, but there are few concrete examples of people learning something new about their own conduct. That, of course, is the real romance held out by any horse whisperer.