Overview:
Concrete Cowboys follows Cole (Caleb McLaughlin) who is sent to live with his father Harp (Idris Elba) in Philadelphia for the summer after getting in trouble with the police. Although he was rebellious against his father at first he would soon begin to form a kinship with the community and the neighborhood Black Cowboys. All in all liked the movie and definitely would recommend it to but I don’t think it is a perfect movie and I do have problems with some of the performances and length of the movie
Pros:
By far my favorite part about this movie is how genuine the community feels. The characters in the movie feel like anybody you would see around the way from the conversations to the personalities that you see in characters like Paris (Jamil Prattis) and Rome (Byron Bowers) who’s funny comments and over dramatic reactions remind me of my cousins that I would talk to at family get togethers.
The way the movie tackles the consequences of gang violence is through the eyes of Paris, a character who was put in a wheelchair due to gang violence and he has my favorite quote in the entire movie, “Man the city built a Starbucks right there where we was fighting at.” This quote showed me how useless gang violence is in a simple phrase and how the communities we have can be gentrified and how that’s the real problem when it comes to our communities and the main reason we have to come together.
The best performance out of all of the Actors belongs to Caleb McLaughlin who not only played a convincing role as Cole with not only his mannerisms and foul language as a young uneducated teen but also with curiosity and willingness to do the right thing that I feel all people have within them. Seeing his character form a relationship with his father even after his father wasn’t there for him for a couple of years shows us a dynamic we do not usually see in movies but is very much a part of real life for a lot of people.
Cons:
Now In my Pros section I stated how I loved the father-son dynamic within the movie between Cole and Harp but the problem here lies with the lack of character analysis given to Harp in the movie. Harp gives Cole a good heartfelt speech and teaches him some lessons when it comes to learning how to tame and ride his horse but we never get to know why Harp wasn’t present for Cole in the past. Harp was one of the main selling points of the movie in the trailers and posters but he isn’t deeply delved into and I feel like the father-
son dynamic would’ve been better if we knew just a little more of Harp’s story.
This movie is simply TOO LONG. There are a lot of unnecessary scenes and the movie could have been wrapped up sooner. I get that the film team wanted to build up the idea of the community but there are too many scenes where there are interactions between characters that could have been cut and the movie would have been just as effective.
Overall Review & Rating:
Concrete Cowboy is a good film overall and is very entertaining and educational when it comes to the ideas of gentrification, gang violence, community, and of the concept of cowboys and their original history. Although I felt like the movie dragged on longer than it should’ve and I really would’ve liked to see more of Harp’s character, I enjoyed the film very much. This movie is filled with great performances from almost all of the cast and the plot of saving the community is engaging. I give Concrete Cowboy an 8/10 and I definitely recommend it to all of you readers.
Introducing new original comic strip ‘Josh & Jason’ created by Joshua Mason
