When tossed off a horse and thrown into the hospital, what makes you get back on that horse? If you are a jockey, it is professionalism, pride and maybe a little bit of madness, hoping the next ride will take you to glory. In the horse racing drama JOCKEY, the talented Clifton Collins Jr. gives an affecting performance as an aging jockey, whose body has taken too many spills, grappling with a fading career and grasping at a final chance for glory. Director/co-writer Clint Bentley’s finely-crafted, well-acted, authentic drama about a little seen side of racing created buzz when it debuted at Sundance.
Jockeys are athletes engaged in a dangerous sport, one with a higher rate of injuries than most sports, and where most age out by their thirties. Collins’ character is in his forties, and quietly battling the serious consequences of his past injuries, but he is not yet ready to give up on dreams of glory.
That last chance at glory arrives in the form of a promising young horse that trainer Ruth (Molly Parker) has picked up for a song, and which she wants jockey Jackson Silva (Collins) to ride. The trainer and jockey are longtime partners in the racing business, but while Ruth is technically Jackson’s boss, she is also his friend. Ruth has high hopes about how far this horse can go, and she wants Jackson to share in that.
The horse’s potential has sparked big dreams in Jackson too, but his feelings are more mixed. He has been concealing troubling physical problems, with his grip and gait, that may be getting worse and, secretly, he worries whether he is still up to the job. Another distraction is a young jockey, Gabriel (Moises Arias), has turned up on the track and has been following Jackson around, with hopes of his own.
The “old warrior” bones of the story are familiar but this film is more complex and twisty than that would suggest. That depth is thanks in part to Collins’ excellent, deeply inhabited performance of a man worn down and facing his own mortality, with unfulfilled dreams at the close of a career. Credit also goes to costars Molly Parker and Moises Arias, who both do fine work here. But the film is aided, in addition, by the presence in the cast of real jockeys, such as Logan Cormier who plays Jackson’s best friend Leo, and the film’s palpable authenticity from being shot at a real Arizona racetrack, Turf Paradise.
Most horse racing dramas focus on the race and the winner’s circle but this one takes us behind the scenes for a look at the hardscrabble lives of working jockeys. It is a world director Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the script with Greg Kwedar and is the son of a jockey, knows well. Unlike most films set in this world, there are few racing scenes. Instead, the film focuses more on the people behind the scenes at the racetrack. Although the jockeys, trainers and grooms at this circuit track live itinerant, carny-like lives, there is a strong sense of community and camaraderie between them, which the film captures with moving warmth.
A beautiful golden light, at dawn or dusk, floods many scenes, transforming the dusty track and its barns into something magical. The symbolism about a man at his twilight is balanced by the film’s dialog, where talk at those moments often turns to various characters’ dreams and hopes, and conveys their strong human bonds, which yields some delightful scenes.
Clifton Collins Jr. is the perfect choice for this film, with his expressive face, across which play complex emotions as he grimaces with pain or mulls the fading of a career that has been his whole life. Jackson hides his pain and concerns behind a good-natured front of dry humor and banter with fellow jockeys. Collins delivers on a character study of a man nearing the end of his athletic career at middle age without having achieved all he wanted yet still dreaming. Jackson is well-regarded by his fellow jockeys and by trainers but he is working a dusty little race track in Phoenix.
JOCKEY packs a lot of human drama into its brisk 94 minutes running time, much like a horse race itself. Although the story is set in the world of professional jockeys and horse racing – and it does give special insights into that world – it isn’t really about races or horses but its people, and their ambitions and dreams, and the idea of legacy at the twilight of a long career. Unlike most movies about this world, there are few racing scenes.
But JOCKEY does take viewers inside the behind-the-scenes world of racing and jockeys like no other film, with an unparalleled realism and authenticity that is almost documentary-like. Director Clint Bentley, co-writer/producer Greg Kwedar and cinematographer Adolpho Veloso all have experience in documentary films, which helps the drama’s cinema verite style work, and its doc-like footage blend seamlessly with its more scripted scenes.
JOCKEY is a moving, intimate human drama led by an outstanding performance by Clifton Collins Jr., set in a fascinating but little seen world of jockeys and race tracks behind the scenes. In a nice touch, the end credits note that a portion of the film’s profits will go to a charity for permanently disabled jockeys.
JOCKEY opens Friday, Feb. 11, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema and other theaters.
RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars
