BUCK

Please see this movie.

See it if you love horses. See it if you love people. See it if you hate people, because BUCK might make you start to like them again. Or, at least like this one gentle cowboy.

Buck Brannaman is happy man, despite all odds. He survived a childhood so rough that a childhood friend who witnessed the pain Buck suffered can't talk about in middle age without crying. Buck is a mostly solitary figure who spends nine months of every year on the road as he travels from one horse clinic to another. He's got a loving (and lovely) wife at home and two grown daughters. He also has a teenage daughter who spends summers on the road with him.

His life consists of driving from one town to another helping, as he says, "people with horse problems." Buck believes a horse is just a mirror of who we are, so as he says, he usually ends up "helping horses with people problems."

He's a real-life horse whisperer. A shy, sensitive soul engaged in the manliest of professions. How sensitive? He may be the only cowboy who will admit to watching Oprah.

Everywhere Buck goes, he teaches horse people how to gently, but effectively, coax their animals into doing what they want them to do. He also ends up teaching people about themselves, and they don't always like what they see. "This horse tells me a lot about you," he says to one woman who has an out-of-control stallion. He's right, and she has to face some harsh facts about her own out-of-control life.

Regular folk and famous stars alike praise Buck as a model horse trainer and humanitarian. Buck got to know Robert Redford when he  consulted on The Horse Whisperer. Wait'll you hear how Buck saved the day when the trained "actor horse" couldn't get a crucial scene right.

Buck, the man, is such an inspiration that I almost think anyone could've turned on the camcorder feature on a phone and made a great movie about him. But, thankfully, this movie was in the hands of a pro. The cinematography, the music, the probing questions asked and honest responses shared -- they all serve to pay tribute to an ordinary, but extraordinary, human being. I can't recommend it highly enough. See it!