The Last Rodeo

The Last Rodeo is the standard of studio-driven character drama we claim no one gives us anymore, the middle-of-the-road, star-driven programer that wears its heart on its sleeve. This feels less like nostalgia and more like a quiet rebuke of contemporary cinema’s prevailing priorities. In invoking a vanished era of filmmaking, The Last Rodeo simultaneously gestures toward a tradition of unadorned sincerity and invites us to wonder how much has been sacrificed at the altar of spectacle.

It doesn’t have any large philosophical ideas or complex structures it wants to show us, nor is it a repetition or replication of some existing book, show or film. It is free from the shackles of the dreaded “IP.” It asserts originality as a virtue, daring to stand on its own narrative legs.

It’s that rare bird, the complete original, at least insofar as it exists entirely unto itself. Granted, ‘originality’ can mean a lot of different things. The specific content is a well-trod story of loss, hope and determination. Which is fine, that’s what the mid-budget Hollywood drama has always been. It’s just become so rare to see we’ve forgotten what it looks like. In reminding us of this familiar terrain, The Last Rodeo acts as both homage and hypothesis: can a film of such simplicity still move us in an age of commercial spectacle? Its confidence lies in that very question.

It’s the story of Joe Wainwright, a former champion bull rider who had to give up the sport after one bad fall too many and but has found some peace living on his daughter’s farm and helping raise her son. When a sudden surge of symptoms reveals the boy has an aggressive brain tumor needing immediate surgery—surgery the family cannot afford—Joe’s quiet life shatters. With time running out and few options on the table, Joe risks reopening optional and physical wounds when he enters the open bull-riding championship looking to claim the prize of $750,000 and keep his grandson alive … even if it kills him. Here, the narrative’s stakes are laid bare without artifice: love versus mortality framed in the rodeo arena. Its emotional pulse emerges from this collision.

Co-written and starring Neal McDonough, The Last Rodeo is a proficient A-to-B story with few surprises or unexpected turns, primarily because it doesn’t need them. Under the watchful hand of experienced journeyman producer-director Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, The War, Up Close & Personal), The Last Rodeo professionally and efficiently moves through its paces, focusing on the pure relationship and small character moments that has always been the hallmark of these kinds of movies. In that sense Avnet is the perfect choice, an experienced craftsman of exactly the kind of movies modern Hollywood doesn’t make anymore and which a younger, slicker director may not have known what to do with. It’s easy to imagine him resting in a glass case with a hammer nearby marked “break in the case of classic mid-budget studio drama.” Avnet’s touch is both assured and discreet, allowing scenes of quiet desperation to resonate without superfluous ornamentation. His direction avoids the temptation of visual grandstanding and instead cultivates a sense of lived-in reality.

actor In that sense Neal McDonough, who also co-wrote the script with Avnet, is the perfect leading man for The Last Rodeo. An excellent with real prospects as a young man, he has gradually moved into more and more character work and type-cast villains across film and television -- rolls he plays with aplomb, but which never quite seem to get the depth of performance he is capable of -- as his career winds on. It’s easy to see a lot of Neal in Joe and vice versa, both grabbing at the one big chance to show what they’re capable of and how underestimated, by life and peers, they have been. McDonough channels this personal resonance into a performance that is at once guarded and raw, every measured gesture suggesting layers of regret and resolve beneath the surface.

He’s aided by a sturdy cast including Mykelti Williamson as his best friend called in to aid him in his quest, For All Mankind’s Sarah Jones as a daughter torn between hating what her father is doing after seeing how it almost killed him and grasping at any hope for her son, and Christopher McDonald as the head of the Professional Bull Riders Association who must pull some strings to get the aging star back in the saddle. And sturdy is probably the best way to describe The Last Rodeo. It goes about its business with no muss or fuss, from Denis Lenoir’s straightforward photography to its casts business like work. None of this is a negative, some films feel like they've forgotten how to do this. The visual austerity—wide shots that root characters in their environment, close-ups that capture unguarded emotion—echoes its narrative restraint. It trusts the audience to find wonder in the everyday details.

More importantly it shows Avnet’s experience as he understands exactly when to get out of his cast’s way. The tough moments when Joe and Charlie confront old pains with one another, Jimmy’s concern for Joe fighting with his need to put on a good show, Sally’s fear for both her father and her son - The Last Rodeo is a film filled with humanity played by actors who have too often had to dig into excess. Watching them just be people is a revelation, and hopefully not for the last time. In these scenes, the film transcends its own modest ambitions, revealing how deeply unvarnished performances can cut when given room to breathe.

The only outcast is professional bullrider Daylon Swearingen who, even playing a professional bullrider, is bland and unconvincing. He is in that sense the equivalent of every professional athlete called upon to make a cameo in a film as themselves.

Is it the greatest drama of the year or some transformative experience? No. But one of the things we've forgotten is that not every film needs to be. Some just need to be The Last Rodeo. In accepting its modest goals, the film reclaims a lost art: the ability to tell a heartfelt story without apology. In an age starved for sincerity, that may be the most radical act of all.

7.5/10

Starring Neal McDonough, Sara Jones, Mykelti Williamson, Christopher McDonald and Graham Harvey.  Directed by Jon Avnet