The film begins and ends with brief dream sequences showing a man riding a horse. This evokes the idea that riding horses, for Brady and guys like him, is life’s big dream. But it’s a very precarious one. One bad break and it can be all over. The point is made devastatingly clear in several scenes where Brady, the main character, who has had a career ending fall, visits Lane, a bull rider who’s his best friend, mentor and personal hero. Lane has experienced a catastrophe that’s left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Brady keeps returning to him, after attempts to do something other than ride a horse, but pulled back to that.
The most powerful scene in the movie has Brady is in a corral with a rancher and a wild horse that the man says has never been ridden. Brady offers to train him and proceeds to do just that—and watching him is breathtaking. Reportedly, this just happened during the filming: they were at a ranch where there was this wild horse and the actor offered to tame him. The director let the camera roll for two 40-minute takes. Cut together in 20 shots or so that run a couple of minutes, the sequence shows the whole process, from the horse kicking and bucking and rearing back, to the point where he lets Brady pat him, get on his back, ride him and then slide off again. And that is the accomplishment that counts for Brady, and the one that may elude him going forward.
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