After suffering a crushed skull during a rodeo, Brady Blackburn’s riding days are over as one more fall could kill him. He can still train horses (or so I recall — I saw it more than six months ago) but he’s mainly looking at dull, retail-store work for the rest of his life, and you feel really badly as the poor guy sulks and laments because he can’t do what he loves. And that’s pretty much it. I should be upfront and admit I wasn’t giving Chloé Zhao‘s film my undivided attention. I wasn’t dozing but I wasn’t riveted. It had my respect — it has an honest, real-deal vibe — but at the same time I was muttering “is this story gonna go anywhere? The guy’s in a bad spot — I get that — but is he going to find a way out of this predicament or off himself in the manner of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky‘s The Wrestler or what?” The Rider has an 85% Metacritic score.