I wasn’t aware of the Fletcher Street cowboys, but I’d heard of the Compton Cowboys and thought they were awesome, so I was excited when I learned about this movie. An interesting coming-of-age story about a boy reconnecting with his father and finding himself.
When Cole keeps getting into trouble at school, his single mom, at her wit’s end, decides to bring him to Philadelphia to spend the summer with his dad. Cole is resistant – after being estranged from his dad for most of his life, he doesn’t take kindly to his dad laying down the law and suddenly acting like a father. But his dad introduces him to a local riding club, where Cole learns a lot about himself and who he wants to be through connecting with a wary horse.
I enjoy stories about troubled kids learning to respect and value themselves after someone helps them cultivate a talent, but when the troubled kids are BIPOC, the adult mentoring them is often white and the tropes can get tiresome. But in recent years, I’ve been finding more stories in which that adult is a member of their own community, in this case, Cole’s dad and the other Fletcher Street cowboys. Through the riding club, Cole is humbled doing chores like mucking out the stables. He learns to problem-solve, to ask for help when he needs it, and to care for/nurture another living thing. He becomes part of a community who value their horses and the experience of riding as well as the long history of Black cowboys in North Philadelphia, and he sees how hard they fight to protect their way of life.
Something else I like about this story is that there isn’t just one adult taking Cole under their wing here. Harp, his dad, is one of many Fletcher Street cowboys showing Cole the ropes of riding and teaching a few life lessons along the way. He learns a variety of skills, horse-related and others, from multiple sources, each with a different approach and different advice to offer.
In fact, Harp is the one who probably has the most difficulty mentoring Cole. Harp sees a lot of his younger self in Cole and uses tough-love tactics in the hopes of keeping his son from repeating his own mistakes. But when he’s hard on Cole and effusive/welcoming with other young cowboys, it makes Cole feel like Harp doesn’t want him there, like Harp is a father figure to everyone at the stables except for him. Just like Cole has to learn to channel a lot of his grievances into his riding, Harp has to learn how to genuinely convey his love for his son.
I’ve liked Caleb McLaughlin on Stranger Things, where he plays Lucas and too often doesn’t have enough to do, so it’s great to see him take center stage here. Cole is put through his emotional paces in this film, from infuriation to joy, from exhilaration to anguish, and McLaughlin delivers at every turn. Idris Elba gives a strong, dynamic performance as Harp, and Lorraine Toussaint definitely “understands the assignment,” as the kids say, as Harp’s warm but no-nonsense neighbor Nessi. I also always appreciate seeing Jharrel Jerome (who played the teenage Kevin in Moonlight and was fantastic as Korey in When They See Us,) so it’s good to have him pop up as Smush, a local kid who represents more of a pull toward Cole’s old pasttimes. Additionally, some of the supporting characters are played by real-life Fletcher Street cowboys, which is cool.
Warnings
Language, violence, and drinking/smoking/drug references.
* * *
Now that Shang-Chi is finally out and Tony Leung Chiu-wai has made his very-long-time-coming Hollywood debut, I wonder what his Hollywood career might look like going forward. Thanks to the interview he did with Elle Men Singapore, we know he already has more English-language work lined up, with a TV series due to shoot next year. (Seriously, what is this show??? Tell me everything!) And given the current political state of affairs between Hong Kong and mainland China, there are changes coming to those industries that could potentially make work in either of them more difficult for Leung in the future, so I hope he continues to have opportunities for interesting roles in the west. The big question, though, is what kind? I’ve heard some folks online talking about how he would make an ideal Bond villain or how they’d love to see him in Star Wars, while others have argued that they don’t want to see him typecast as villains or relegated solely to blockbuster genre films. Even as Hollywood has very slowly started to open itself to greater opportunities for Asian actors, it’s still hard for me to imagine Hollywood taking full advantage of Leung’s incredibly wide range and offering him the sort of roles he’s accustomed to in Hong Kong or the mainland. The fact that Leung is almost 60 is another factor here; even before you consider his race and Hollywood’s issues with Asian actors, he’s still unlikely to get the same sort of romantic leads, for example, that made him so iconic in the ‘90s and 2000s.
And maybe that’s not what he wants to do anyway. At this stage in his career, maybe Leung is looking for different challenges, new types of roles that he hasn’t really played before. And for me, that’s what I’m ultimately hoping for when it comes to Tony Leung Chiu-wai in Hollywood. I hope he gets to do whatever he wants to do. I hope he gets opportunities to take roles that show off his talent in genres he wants to work in, large- or small-scale projects as he chooses. I hope he’s able to work with directors or actors he wants to work with, and I hope he’s appreciated for the talent that he is. Hollywood made the most of Leung’s western debut with Shang-Chi; let’s hope they don’t squander that going forward.
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