A recent Netflix original starring Idris Elba & Caleb McLaughlin (from Stranger Things). In the city of Philadelphia, McLaughlin gets dumps there by his exasperated mother who has it up to here w/his antics & decides to let Elba, his dad, take the reins for a bit. What McLaughlin doesn't realize is Elba & his neighbors are a dying breed of urban cowboy, renting stable space for their animals (although Elba has taken it a step further by having his horse dorm w/him in his apartment) & raising them as if they were still living in the past. McLaughlin has hooked up w/an old friend from the hood, played by Jharrel Jerome (from When They See Us), who's striving to start his own drug thing but Elba lays down the law, either McLaughlin will follow the rules of his house or he'll need to hit the skids which plays into the tried & true formula of the wayward youth having to make a decision whether to continue along his dangerous path (especially when the law, in the form of Method Man (?), has taken an interest in his case) or straighten up & fly right. Which may be this film's Achilles' Heel, since this bit of narrative is an all too familiar one (when speaking about it to a friend of mine I called this film Cowboyz in the Hood) which really took away from the meat of the story, these modern day cowpokes trying to hold on to their piece of history. Much like Charm City Kings (a film inspired by a documentary on dirt bike culture in Baltimore), this film probably would've worked better as a doc or if it had to be something 'inspired by' then all the usual crime tropes should've fallen by the wayside since there is more than enough (especially since some of the concrete cowboys play themselves) to keep an audience invested. Also starring Lorraine Toussaint (Shambala Green from the original Law & Order) as one of the few female cowgirls still riding those concrete streets.
Review of Concrete Cowboy
