WILD LIKE ME

WILD LIKE ME is a documentary streaming on Pure Flix about prison inmates in Arizona finding redemption through training wild horses. With an excess of wild horses in the Arizona outback, BLM is tasked with thinning the herds to avoid overpopulation. A prison in Arizona, noticing this, decided to step in and help. They created a program that allows prison inmates to train the wild horses and sell them. The new program was a hit, and the impact it left on the prison community was far larger than ever could have been expected. The inmates, first of all, had to learn to master their emotions. If they lost their temper on the stubborn horses, they were thrown out of the program. Since the training was every inmate’s favorite part of the week, they learned how to control their anger and impatience and work with the horses. It didn’t take the inmates long to realize that the horses were very similar to them, insecure, untrusting and stubborn. Their trainer, who is also a chaplain, helped them to work through these different parallels and present them with life lessons to help them reenter the world and succeed after their sentence was served.

WILD LIKE ME highlights the redemption process the inmates undergo while training these horses, and it does a great job of doing so. The movie is very personal. Viewers hear directly from many of the inmates about their lives and how the program shaped and transformed them into better men.

WILD LIKE ME moves at a leisurely pace, but it builds to several quietly powerful emotional moments. The interaction between the horses and the men changes both Man and Horse.

WILD LIKE ME has a strong Christian, biblical, moral worldview that really shines. The Bible and God are mentions and shown throughout the movie. Even some of the inmates, when interviewed, talk about God’s role in their lives. “Amazing Grace” is played over the soundtrack in one scene, and there’s a prayer in the name of Jesus at the end.

Redemption is the main theme in WILD LIKE ME, and it’s displayed wonderfully. Many of the men in prison are filled with regret and pain, and training wild horses helps them process those feelings and overcome them. One of the main points in the documentary, and something the chaplain talks to the inmates about, is the herd analogy. He explained how if the trained horses are released back into the wild with the other wild horses, they quickly would revert back to their old ways. Just like the horses, if the men return to the world after being changed in prison and go back to the same group of people they were with before, they’ll return to their old self-destructive habits and probably end back in prison. This is a great message, not just for inmates but for everyone in life. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Bad company corrupts good character.”