You want my honest-to-God’s opinion on Netflix buying TIFF 2020 selection “Concrete Cowboy”? The Idris Elba-starring movie sure as hell isn’t an Oscar contender. If anything, the streaming giant saw this as an opportunity to add another title to their library. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Cowboy’ will be liked by audiences, it has a 76% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a decent 66 on Metacritic.
I thought I had reviewed “Concrete Cowboy” during this past September’s Toronto International Film Festival, but no, I didn’t. That’s how underwhelmed I was by director Ricky Staub’s film, I didn’t bother writing anything about it. It has shades of familiarity in its coming-of-age genre tropes, and it’s all-too slickly delivered.
The plot has a troubled teenager (Caleb McLaughlin) spending the summer in North Philadelphia and his estranged father’s (Elba) vibrant urban-cowboy subculture. I found the whole thing rather forced and unimpressive, which is a real shame considering the unique milieu deserved a more vivid depiction - I mean, urban Philadelphia, Cowboys, Horses, as Joe Biden would say, come on, man!
While no release date has been set, Netflix is banking on an early 2021 debut.