A Faster Horse

Mustang fanatics will be thrilled by the level of access that Ford provided the filmmakers to shoot at the company’s Dearborn, Mich., headquarters and interview the Mustang design team headed by chief engineer Dave Pericak. Even so, it may be difficult to escape a sense that the film sometimes plays like an extended product promo.

The whole package, with its bizarre fondness for slow motion, feels correspondingly sluggish. All the components are here, but A Faster Horse cries out for more dynamic performance.

The tidbits we learn are wrapped in an unabashedly promotional tone that overestimates the global emotional attachment to this car’s muscular mythos. It’s difficult to believe that this tribute comes from the director who showed such delicacy in his appreciation of Jiro Ono’s art.