Set in the unfamiliar world of African-American backyard rodeos, Annie Silverstein’s “Bull” handles hot-button issues with a cool eye and a calming tone. Racism, opioid use, poverty and pain weave gently in and out of her story (co-written with her husband, Johnny McAllister) without distracting us from either its primary concerns or central relationship.
Instead, there’s a matter-of-fact quality to the filmmaking, a rejection of melodrama and embrace of naturalism that slows the movie’s pulse and softens its edges. At its center is the unlikely bond between a white teenager, Kris (Amber Havard, in her acting debut), and a black rodeo wrangler in his 40s named Abe (a perfect Rob Morgan). Kris lives with her little sister and chronically ill grandmother (Keeli Wheeler) in a semirural neighborhood in Texas. Their mother (Sara Albright) is in prison, and Kris, with her quietly disengaged affect, appears beaten down before her life has barely begun.
Abe’s bruises run deeper and are more debilitating. A former bull rider worn out by accumulated injuries, he now risks his life to distract the enraged animals and protect the fallen. Pills and alcohol help alleviate the pain, and ease the humiliation of clowning when he’s unfit for more agile duties. Yet he’s sympathetic to youngsters who have lost their way; when Kris and her friends trash his house one weekend, he’s willing to accept her cleanup help rather than have her sent to juvenile detention.
Shot in a traditionally black cowboy neighborhood on the outskirts of Houston, “Bull” opens with a brutalized chicken and closes with the vague sense of wounds soothed. Between, Kris and Abe each make poor choices, suffer poignant disappointments and haltingly move forward.
Yet while Silverstein’s commitment to authenticity is admirable (she spent years visiting backyard rodeos across Texas, talking with the participants), her narrative is too tamped-down and languorous to catch hold. The movie’s internalized emotions and elliptical style can allow small things to make large points — as when Kris rides, without comment, in the back seat of Abe’s truck rather than shotgun — but the overall mood rarely rises above dispiriting.
Only in the rodeo scenes does “Bull” come alive. Shabier Kirchner’s dusty, electric shots of heaving beasts and bobbing riders, slicing horns and smashing hooves feel breathtakingly real. Watching, Kris can’t stop smiling: It’s an expression as foreign to her as hope.
Bull
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
