On Swift Horses is a shallow, aimless, and emotionally empty melodrama that wastes its cast, its setting, its themes, and the audience’s time.
Set in the postwar American West, the film is about hidden secrets and the quiet longings of queer people during that era. Directed by Daniel Minahan, who was drawn to Shannon Pufahl’s novel for its introspective nature and hoped to translate that into a cinematic experience, the film fails on both fronts, ending up boring instead of introspective, and sluggish and unfocused instead of feeling cinematic.
With a cast full of good-looking individuals who aren’t the best match for this kind of layered story, the movie drags as its main characters make one bad decision after another, with little at stake and no real consequences. Despite featuring numerous love scenes, there’s a noticeable lack of chemistry between anyone on screen. Elordi and Edgar-Jones, in particular, come off just as disengaged from the film as the audience.
The film only becomes barely watchable when Will Poulter is on screen. He delivers a more nuanced portrayal of a man constantly reduced by his loved ones. Even when the script paints him as one-dimensional and naive, Poulter finds moments of vulnerability that make him the only character remotely worth caring about.
The director seems more interested in capturing the period’s surface details than telling a compelling story. It’s not a cheap-looking production, and it benefits from strong costume design and cinematography. But much like My Policeman, an overhyped TIFF release from two years ago, On Swift Horses fills its world with selfish, petty characters that I found myself caring less and less about with every passing scene.
- 1Sentimental Value
- 2Hamnet
- 3One Battle After Another
- 4Ne Zha 2
- 5Blue Moon
- 248On Swift Horses#248 of 256
- 1Conclave
- 2Better Man
- 3The Substance
- 4The Assessment
- 5Queer
- 49On Swift Horses#49 of 51
- Where to watch
Crave- Where to watch
Max
Play trailer
- Original title
- On Swift Horses
- Director
- Daniel Minahan
- Cast
- Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, Diego Calva, Sasha Calle, Don Swayze, Ryan Fitzgerald, Andrew Keenan-Bolger
- Rated
- 14A
- Screenwriter
- Bryce Kass
- Composer
- Mark Orton
- Cinematography
- Luc Montpellier, Alice Boucherie
- Editor
- Robert Frazen, Kate Sanford, Joe Murphy
- Country
- Language
- English
- Box office
- $1.174 million
- Distributor (CA)
- Sony Pictures Classics