Sundance review: 'Jockey' is a beautiful, authentic drama of a horse racer's life, with a heartfelt performance by Clifton Collins Jr.

‘Jockey’

★★★★

Appearing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Can be streamed through the festival digital portal on Tuesday, February 2. Running time: 95 minutes.

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There is beauty and pain at the heart of “Jockey,” director Clint Bentley poetic and spartan study of a man realizing he’s near the end of his ride.

Jackson Silva, played by the veteran character Clifton Collins Jr., is a jockey who’s worked the circuit of thoroughbred racing for decades, and has the scars and mended bones to show for it. He mostly works with one trainer, Ruth (Molly Parker), usually riding the horses she trains for other owners.

This season, at Phoenix’s Turf Paradise (where the film was shot), Ruth has her own horse, a filly Ruth bought as a yearling when other owners passed her over. Ruth sees something in this horse, named Dido’s Lament, and Jackson sees it, too. They make a deal that Jackson will ride Dido’s Lament, provided he bring his weight down.

Jackson’s pursuit of a late-career championship hits some snags. There’s a health issue that he tries to ignore, until he can’t. One of his best friends, Leo (Logan Cormier), takes a spill in a race, and lands in the hospital. And a young jockey, Gabriel (Moises Arias), arrives at the track to declare that Jackson is the kid’s father.

Within this simple story, Bentley and his writing partner Greg Kwedar explore the rough-and-tumble life of a jockey. Bentley, whose father was a jockey, goes into the locker rooms and onto the track with real-life jockeys, capturing the racetrack life with more authenticity than most horse-related movies ever get. Cinematographer Adolpho Veloso shoots most of the film at “magic hour,” those times near sunrise and sunset when the light is just perfect — a visual match for the twilight of Jackson’s career.

Parker and Arias are powerful in their supporting roles. But the movie belongs, first and foremost, to Collins, who has earned his spot in the saddle after a long career as a supporting player that runs  from “Traffic” to “Westworld.” Collins embodies the bone-weary struggles of an aging athlete, when there’s more track behind him than in front, in a performance that is spare and graceful.

There’s an amazing moment where Bentley and Collins crystalize the thrill and peril of the racer’s life. There’s a race midway through the film, which Bentley shows us only as a single long take, the camera close up on Jackson’s face, from the starting gate to the finish line. Everything we need to know is conveyed in that scene, and it’s an indicator of what a mature, beautiful film “Jockey” is.