Broke

Bluesky

What makes a Western? Is it the look, the location, the storyline? From the outset, Carlyle Eubank’s film very much has that atmosphere, though it takes no interest in revenge or moral reckoning, and it’s set in the present day. Its initial shot could take place any time in the past two centuries, however, as a quiet, smooth white plain shining in the morning light suddenly erupts, a battered-looking man clawing his way up from beneath the snow. His denim jeans immediately establish that he doesn’t belong there, and that he has a sturdy constitution, having somehow made it through the night. We get another illustration of his fortitude as he drags himself to his feet and staggers away; and of his smarts when, having reached a car that won’t start, he rips the insulation out of its seats and wraps it around himself.

Our erstwhile hero True (Wyatt Russell) may be tough in that situation, but physicality isn’t enough when one’s worst enemy is internal. He’s a rodeo rider. He lives for the eight seconds he can stay on top of a bucking horse before it throws him. He loves the horses. He loves the glamour of it all, and the easy going lifestyle it allows him, in which he never has to think too far ahead. But he’s starting to have problems. He gets headaches. He gets moments of confusion. He takes drugs to hold these things at bay, and the drugs start to cause problems of their own. When he meets and begins dating a nurse (Auden Thornton), it becomes impossible to keep secrets about all this, and pretty soon a doctor has told him what he’s known all along: that if he doesn’t give up riding, the cumulative damage will kill him.

It’s a challenging role for Russell who, somewhat worryingly, told me that for the concussion scenes he drew on his experience as an ice hockey goalie. He does an impressive job of slipping between different mental states whilst keeping his character consistent, and he has a naturally engaging quality which helps to keep viewers with him during his more difficult phases. There is no real aggression on display here, and it’s interesting to see an exploration of crisis in this most masculine of genres which is at no point reliant on bullying or misogyny. Even when True clashes with his father (ably played by Dennis Quaid), there is no sense of undue parental control – just of a clash of personalities and ways of thinking. This doesn’t reduce the tension but makes the drama more effective.

Both Russell and Quaid are very much at ease around the trappings of the ranch where their characters live, their background behaviours adding to the overall sense of authenticity. Musical choices like Jimmy Dean’s Big Bad John represent their shared culture as one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. True has a little brother whose interest in zombie survivalism – when he can’t even bring himself to shoot a rabbit – endears him to them both, but the kid has his own arc and gradually reveals himself as his own person. The female characters could do with more development but Thornton does a lot with what’s on the page.

We spend relatively little time in the rodeo ring but it’s sufficient to establish what’s eating at True and why he’s so strongly affected. It’s not the drugs that he’s addicted to and recovery cannot be as simple as resisting a fix. The path of his life being bound up with the landscape sees his psychological isolation eventually lead to physical isolation, and that sudden shift from warm grassy fields to the chill of remote woodland. Eubank keeps it simple for the most part, focusing on domestic drama, downbeat locations, the little things in life, but those are precisely the things that terrify True, and his desperate search for emotional balance takes him to dangerous places in more ways than one.

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