★½
“[Obvious comment redacted]”
Giving your film a title like this is basically asking for trouble. It gives snarky critics an extremely easy weapon to wield against the movie. That’s especially so when it’s a low-budget effort, made with considerably more heart than skill. It’s not without merit, especially in the photography. It is crisp and does a good job of capturing some beautiful Montana scenery – there’s a reason the state is nicknamed Big Sky Country – and the rodeo action. The problems are in a script which never met a cliché it didn’t like, and performances that do little or nothing to elevate the material.
The very first scene has a mother professing her love to her daughter, Jessie (Wilson). Two minutes later, she dies in a car accident. That’s a good indicator of the level of plotting you can expect from this. Jessie goes to live with her uncle Mick (Bracich) and mopes around. A lot. She is eventually brought out of her shell after Mick buys her an equally broken equine called Lucky – I presume this is where the title comes from. Girl and horse bond, help each other to heal, and take part in the sport of barrel racing. This had apparently been her mother’s favourite pastime; not that we knew anything about this before she died, of course. I also hope you know all the intricacies of barrel racing, for the film assumes you do, rather than bothering to explain anything about it.
I get that Montana is a different world, with a slower pace of life. Yet the dramatic approach here is beyond low-key, to the point of soporific. Even when Mick has a stroke (damn, this family has some poor luck), Jessie’s reaction barely registers above the level of slight annoyance. It feels very much that Wilson was chosen, not for her dramatic abilities, rather her talent in the saddle. To this non-horse person, she looked solid there: it turns out she was the 2017 Montana High School Rodeo Association Champion Barrel Racer, and has been in the sport since she was 4. So her action scenes are authentic and work. When she opens her mouth? Not so much. The subplot in which she has to chose between nice nerd Kyle (Christensen) and bad boy bull-rider Blaze (Olson), falls flatter than huckleberry pancakes as a result.
At the other end of the spectrum, is the musical score. This doesn’t so much enhance proceedings, as signal the intended emotions enthusiastically. It’s probably the first time a soundtrack could be accused of blatantly over-acting. Not that there is any particular sense of dramatic escalation. Instead of, say, building to a big barrel racing competition, things peak with an illicit party at which – gasp! ‐ alcohol is being drunk. While there is a contest at the end, with no build-up, it is also severely lacking in impact. It’s clear this was a project born out of and fuelled by passion. It’s also very apparent, that alone falls well short of being enough.
Dir: Josiah Burdick
Star: Brooke Wilson, Mark Bracich, Michael Christensen, Brian Olson