Cow­boys

Beloved char­ac­ter actor Steve Zahn has had an eclec­tic career to date, switch­ing between comedic and dra­mat­ic roles. You’re just as like­ly to find him in crit­i­cal­ly dubi­ous slap­stick fare like The Ridicu­lous 6 as you are an indie dra­ma like Cap­tain Fan­tas­tic, or voic­ing CG char­ac­ters like Bad Ape in stu­dio block­buster War for the Plan­et of the Apes.

As a father on the run across the Mon­tana moun­tains with his trans child in Anna Kerrigan’s west­ern-tinged dra­ma Cow­boys, Zahn is per­fect­ly cast in a tale of iden­ti­ty, ide­al­ism and accep­tance. When Joe (Sasha Knight) express­es his desire to tran­si­tion, it trig­gers a cri­sis for the John­son fam­i­ly. Troy (Zahn) is accept­ing of his son’s iden­ti­ty, while Sarah (Jil­lian Bell) dis­miss­es it as a fad and blames Troy for fill­ing Joe’s head with fan­ci­ful bed­time sto­ries and dreams of wild, rugged explo­ration. The result­ing sep­a­ra­tion caus­es fur­ther ten­sions, and when Joe makes a des­per­ate plea to escape the oppres­sive denial of his moth­er, Troy abducts him.

The por­tray­al of Joe’s trans iden­ti­ty is time­ly, yet, as writer and direc­tor, Ker­ri­g­an choos­es to keep the focus square­ly on the char­ac­ters of the piece rather than the pol­i­tics of the world they inhab­it. Notably, Ker­ri­g­an exam­ines notions of mod­ern mas­culin­i­ty as fil­tered through a clas­si­cal take on genre film. Push­ing back against Sun­day-best dress­es, Joe starts to view and con­struct his male iden­ti­ty through that of a cow­boy. Exist­ing with­in his father’s bed­time sto­ries, as well as in the com­ic books he unsuc­cess­ful­ly pleads with his moth­er to buy him at the store, these fig­ures rep­re­sent adven­ture and free­dom – a world where extra­or­di­nary things hap­pen and noth­ing is fixed.

These cow­boys also inhab­it Joe’s real-life, with plaid shirts, jeans and flashy belt buck­les worn by the men of the town, includ­ing Troy. Shown bowl­ing, social­is­ing at the bar and fish­ing, this ver­sion of male­ness appears active and con­trasts the role of women in the com­mu­ni­ty as an exas­per­at­ed Sarah asks ​“who on earth would want to be a woman?” when try­ing to find answers for Joe’s rejec­tion of femininity.

Troy wants to be a good father and seems aware of his image as a hero to his son. When he spir­its Joe across the wilder­ness – on a horse, no less – he seeks to swoop in and save him by bring­ing their dream to life. This ide­al of fault­less, sim­ple hero­ism is chal­lenged by his bipo­lar sta­tus. Zahn brings a lev­el of intense vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the role and excels in cap­tur­ing Troy’s increas­ing strug­gle to face up to real­i­ty, with his iden­ti­ty as a par­ent also dis­sect­ed as the expe­di­tion con­tin­ues. Over the course of just 83 min­utes, we wit­ness the devel­op­ment and decon­struc­tion of ideals, fol­lowed by the promise of a fresh start.

Nuanced and extreme­ly well-craft­ed, this is an impres­sive fea­ture debut from Ker­ri­g­an who draws out lay­ered and emo­tive per­for­mances from a cast that clear­ly con­nect­ed with the mate­r­i­al. Joe’s jour­ney may be the most promi­nent thread of Cow­boys, but Ker­ri­g­an skil­ful­ly weaves a tapes­try that illus­trates and inter­ro­gates broad­er notions of self in a work that is intro­spec­tive and deeply fulfilling.