On Swift Horses

A repressed movie about repression. The characters all have a certain emotional distance from each other, and I felt that the filmmaker had an emotional distance from the characters themselves.

A beautiful, empty mess of a movie.

Minahan has made a film about embracing life when you’re not legally allowed to, and he refuses to make watching it a misery, no matter how rough it gets.

For a movie whose core metaphor is about gambling, On Swift Horses rarely takes risks, sketching superficial characters that are more ideas than real people.

The acting is a saving grace, especially Edgar-Jones’ commitment to nuance and Poulter’s refreshingly shaded Lee, whose depth of awareness at a critical moment is a believable surprise, beautifully handled by the actor.

The film is too obsessed with surfaces to be particularly deep, but Daisy Edgar-Jones is especially good as a woman longing for something just out of her grasp and Will Poulter is a heartbreaking everyman.

...this film... is essentially a revisit of the same themes of Brokeback Mountain... instead of a married man, it's a married woman.

On Swift Horses quickly loses interest and presents a movie that aims to explore numerous thematic stories of great importance, but ultimately conveys virtually nothing.

It would be easy to point to this group and bemoan the lack of a single lighting-bolt presence who jolts the whole thing to life. Instead, the main players glow with just the right amount of simmering heat; they’re starry, but not yet dominating stars.

Despite its strong performances and evocative visuals, On Swift Horses takes us on a journey that is too restrained to be truly memorable. [Full Review in Spanish]