Mark Reviews Movies: BULL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 30, 2020

The girl has her whole life ahead of her but no direction. The man knows exactly what he wants to do, but the thing he's doing will probably result in a much shorter life. Co-writer/director Annie Silverstein's Bull simply watches as the lives of these two characters collide, but despite the movie's solid performances and permeating aura of melancholy, it never quite comes together, either as a character study or as an examination of how socioeconomic circumstances can define the whole of a person's life.

The two main characters are Kris (Amber Havard), a 14-year-old girl who has to take care of her grandmother and younger sister while her mother is in prison, and Abe (Rob Morgan), a professional bullfighter (more of a wrangler than a fighter) who drinks too much and has taken more than too many hits over the course of his career. The two are neighbors, and they're forced together after the girl throws a party in Abe's house.

Instead of having the kid arrested, Abe agrees to let Kris help him at home and work. Soon, the bullfighter takes a nasty hit that prevents him from working the higher-paying rodeo gigs, so he's stuck in the amateur circuit. Meanwhile, Kris wants to learn bull-riding for fun and as a way to make some money. Her mother has a notion of moving the family from Texas to a farm in Oklahoma—if she can make parole.

The connective tissue between these two characters is desperation, as well as some stubbornness. Abe is willing to risk his health to keep working, because it's all he has known, wants to do, and can do to make ends meet. Kris wants out of this place, where everyone is poor and miserable, and she eventually starts selling prescription drugs as a way to make some quick cash.

In her first performance, Havard is almost tragically apathetic in accepting the reality of her surroundings, until she gets a glimpse of hope from the rodeo. Morgan plays Abe as a man who has adopted such a tough exterior that he won't allow himself to be or appear vulnerable.

There's much to admire in Bull. Silverstein's approach is decidedly naturalistic, from the unadorned locales to the dreary lighting. Her and Johnny McAllister's screenplay, though, too often feels as if its characters matter less than the unstoppable spiral toward misery.

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