Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses is beautifully photographed and has detailed sets. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi, who both executive produced, star alongside Will Poulter and Diego Calva. Muriel and her husband Lee are starting a new post-Korean War life in California. Lee’s charismatic brother, Julius, is an erratic gambler with a secret that will be exposed. A love triangle forms, and all kinds of secret relationships form among the cast of characters, with racehorse gambling and exploring a forbidden love that isn’t allowed in this very conservative time in America.
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The cast is impressive, and they do the best acting I have seen from them in a while, especially Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi. This cast does their best despite a mediocre script with unwarranted, emotionally calculated moments that hinder the movie from soaring. Acting was the strongest element of this ensemble cast. Will Poulter’s monologue toward the end about regretting love was pretty good? (“Did you ever want any of this?” he laments). Between this, Warfare, and Death of a Unicorn, Poulter brings the most to his movies. Though On Swift Horses is not a memorable film, I could see a future where we look back on this cast in awe, like the leads in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go.
Even if the post-war melodrama On Swift Horses gets all the technical aspects right, especially for a lower-budget and independently financed film, such as the sets, costumes, and overall setting and mood of the time. Still, they needed to work on this screenplay and plot details. This is a queer love story that feels just as repressed in filmmaking storytelling technique as much as it would be for the characters living during this era. It’s an overall melodramatic slog where connections are made and relationships are broken without much of a point, concluding with a very unsatisfying ending.
On Swift Horses is now playing in theaters nationwide.
