In Philadelphia teenager Cole is starting to fall on the wrong path and when he goes to live with his father Harp he is about to discover the world of urban horseback riding and the issues that come along with it.
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The main issue for the urban cowboys was that they did not actually own stables or places of their own and just rented. Cole was a little bit shocked when he was sharing a room with a horse, especially as he was not used to this at all. He resented his father a lot and the story is actually mainly about them rebuilding a relationship. Cole is on the verge of entering the gang/crime life with an old friend he is reunited with, something Harp really wants to stop happening.
I guess with that part of the story it highlights just how easy it would be for Cole to make that choice mainly because of a friendship, he knows it is totally the wrong thing to do and that Smush's life plan is not really very realistic. He does begin to enjoy the cowboy world with his fathers friends who behave more like a close family unit, that was pretty inspiring in all honesty.
Throughout though it just felt like a very average film for me and nothing really exceptional or even all that exciting. I think if I had known that it was based on actual events before it might have made it a little bit better as until the end of the film I had no idea that this was actually inspired and based on a real-life place/people/events. Not something I had any knowledge of at all, so it certainly made the film interesting in that sense. Based on the Fletcher Street Stables and the novel Ghetto Cowboy.
A big positive though was the performance from Caleb McLaughlin who we all probably know from Stranger Things over the years, it feels like a proud moment when you see the kids from that now getting some decent leading roles. McLaughlin was given a tough character who was just not happy with anything and very angry all of the time, I felt he carried this off very well. His scenes with Idris Elba were decent enough as the father/son duo. This is a slightly different style in roles for Elba and I enjoyed that as the majority of films I have seen him in so far he tends to be typecast in the same character.
#FridayFakeCinemaClub