Jock­ey – first-look review

In the world of horse rac­ing, every sec­ond counts. Clint Bentley’s thrilling film tells the sto­ry of Jack­son (Clifton Collins Jr), a jock­ey pro­pelled by the burn­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness whose heart beats in-sync with the rhythm of thun­der­ing hooves.

We meet Jack­son in his last sea­son of rid­ing. After decades on the rac­ing cir­cuit, his health is dete­ri­o­rat­ing and his liveli­hood, which requires him to bal­ance on a thor­ough­bred gal­lop­ing over 30 miles per hour, is no longer sus­tain­able. How­ev­er, when sta­ble man­ag­er and friend Ruth (Mol­ly Park­er) intro­duces an ener­getic young mare (“a swan with teeth”) to the sta­ble, Jack­son tacks up to ride for the cham­pi­onship. Although not every­thing goes quite to plan; when Gabriel (Moi­ses Arias), a new jock­ey on the cir­cuit, arrives with the claim that he is Jackson’s son, things quick­ly get personal.

Ruth notices small changes in her best jock­ey, as Jackson’s ini­tial resis­tance to being a father fig­ure dis­si­pates and he and Gabriel grow clos­er. Bentley’s inti­mate char­ac­ter study shows a man com­ing to terms with his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, rest­ing on a career-best per­for­mance from Clifton Collins Jr, who nav­i­gates the role of ath­lete and father with sub­tle but strik­ing con­vic­tion. Equal­ly impres­sive is Mol­ly Park­er as the only woman on the rac­ing circuit.

Shot at an actu­al horse rac­ing venue, Jock­ey is attuned to the pace and dai­ly rhythms of the track. This is a very per­son­al film for Bent­ley: his own father was a jock­ey and it is not his first rodeo; his short film 9 Races, cen­tred on an injury-rid­den jock­ey, also pro­files the high-adren­a­line and male-dom­i­nat­ed realm of horse rac­ing. In the authen­tic way is cap­tures this unique world, Jock­ey shares sim­i­lar­i­ties with Chloé Zhao’s The Rid­er, anoth­er qui­et­ly med­i­ta­tive and poignant tale of life on the fringes.

As the sun begins to set on Jackson’s Amer­i­can Dream, he is eclipsed by his lega­cy. With years of rac­ing comes the aches, pains and tremors of an age­ing body. But as he says defi­ant­ly, ​“I’m like wine though, I’m get­ting better.”