“Sweetgrass,” subtitled “The Last Ride Of The American Cowboy,” documents the remarkable story of two shepherds herding 3,000 sheep for summer pasture in the mountains of south-central Montana along a 150-mile journey filled with dangers and challenges.
Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor pay homage to this final drive and the way of life that disappeared with it. Rancher Lawrence Allested becomes the last person to take his sheep into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains on a federal grazing permit.
Alternately epic and detailed, the documentary succeeds in part because it combines the boundless wilderness with the minute details of the animals. The camera jostles among the sheep as often as it observes the herd from nearby mountain ridges.
Movie Review
Sweetgrass
Dive verdict: 4.5 of 5 stars