Cowboys

By:  Lisa Steinberg

In rural western Montana Troy (Steve Zahn) is a doting father for his child Josie (Sasha Knight). Josie (“Joe”) is made to wear dresses by her mom Sally (Jillian Bell), even though it’s clear that Josie isn’t comfortable in them. Josie looks to the cowboys who she is surrounded by and it’s quickly evident that she longs to be one of them. She finally gets the courage to tell her father that she feels like she was born in the wrong body. She’s not a girl, she’s actually a boy and is transgender. The conversation that takes place between Joe and his father is relatable, honest and direct. “I’m not a tomboy. A tomboy’s just another type of girl, but I’m not a girl.  Sometimes I think aliens put me in this girl body as a joke. I’m in the wrong body, OK? I’m a boy.”

Unfortunately, Sally isn’t as accepting and embracing as Troy is with Joe’s identity. Joe desires to dress like a boy with a flashy belt buckle, hat and boots and play with stereotypical boy toys, but Sally just won’t allow it. She treats moments of Joe’s directness with dismissiveness and doesn’t recognize how much it hurts him that his mom doesn’t see the pain he is constantly in because his body doesn’t match his identity.

After the relationship between Troy and Sally sours because of Troy’s mental health issues, Troy attempts to free Joe from his mother’s bigotry by taking him away. They believe that they can make it to the Canadian border. So, they take a horse and set out into the wilderness with their essentials and a gun. They try to keep a low profile while they head north, but nature and happenstance have another intent for them. An instance when Troy has to rescue Joe from the river causes Troy to lose his mental health medication. Tensions build as they get closer to their destination and Troy has to try and keep them going forward at all costs without any form of medicinal aid.  When Sally discoveries that Joe has disappeared, she enlists the local police force led by Faith (Ann Dowd) to try and track them down. As Faith learns more about the circumstances of why Troy and Joe may be on the run, she realizes that their great escape is more than just a kidnapping – it’s about freeing Joe from gender conformity.

Director Anna Kerrigan gives a touching and compassionate view of the relationship and bond between father and son.  She gives us a bounty of lush landscape with views of stunning mountains and vast greenery. Zahn and Knight have a natural rapport and poignant grip that keeps your heart pounding and swelling with an ache at their characters’ plight. You root for them to make it to their destination escape, but at the same time you know that the odds of them actually arriving without being caught aren’t great. They mirror one another so well with their both portrayal of desperate outsiders who just want to be free in all forms. Dowd plays an empathetic but determined detective who ends up being underused. Bell seems miscast as the mother who wants what she deems best for her daughter. She and Zahn share an off dynamic that lacks chemistry which instantly feels like they have been inherently mismatched. Bell comes off as rigid and unnatural with her delivery and seems out of place in most moments. The pacing of the movie tends to drag and events tend to have no harrowing or palpable build up or transition.

Cowboys is a thoughtful look at the desperate plea for freedom in all forms, including identity.  It may be a clunky and difficult, but the messages within the movie resonate about longing for authenticity and living life by our own definitions.

Cowboys is currently streaming during Outfest LA.