Jockey — veteran’s story plays like a boxing movie in racing silks

The sun always on the American horizon, life in the elegiac drama Jockey seems to take place only at dawn and dusk. Homage to Terrence Malick aside, the approach makes sense: the start of the day is when the horses are fed. The film was shot in Phoenix, Arizona; the style is vérité, dotted with non-professional actors.

The story begins near the finish line. We eavesdrop on the dusty, unglitzy routines of racetrack life, where human participants drily itemise old injuries: blows to the head, broken backs. Gifted veteran Jackson Silva (Clifton Collins Jr) has had his share in a long career, one that seems to be winding down before two arrivals. First, the kind of natural winner he has waited a lifetime to ride. Then, from out of nowhere, an adult son, another jockey. But fate can be ruthless too.

Think of Jockey as a boxing movie in racing silks and the shape will come into focus. Physically the comparison is obvious, Jackson’s efforts to cut weight seeing him busy with a skipping rope and sprinting up the aisles of empty bleachers like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Here, though, no crowd of adoring kids follows him through the streets. Even in race scenes, debut director Clint Bentley restricts his shots to solo close-ups, likely a budgetary decision but also one that underlines the loneliness of the job.

With the basics of the story what they are, the movie plays much as you might expect, although not without flashes of original thinking. Even so, what elevates it most is Collins, a familiar supporting actor with an air of Johnny Cash whose nuanced, soulful work as star makes the whole film ring true.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas from February 4