Simply stated, the best thing going for Chloé Zhao’s (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, Nomadland) The Rider is its authenticity. The plot is not that different than hundreds of other movies you’ve seen before. Yet, it feels refreshingly new and real at the same time. This is due primarily to the vision of the young and talented Zhao as well as the decisions that she made along the way. This includes her hiring of locals to play all of the characters in the film, her choice of setting (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation), her hiring of cinematographer Joshua James Richards to capture the exhaustive landscape of the South Dakota reservation, and her decision of filming this to almost feel like a documentary. Every decision she made worked. Film purists will love this. Those who need the flare or those who need to need forced attempts to bring out the sentiment might be disappointed. I found myself to be somewhere in the middle. The film has a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (83% audience rating). That feels about right for the critics and a little high for the audience score. I will say early that I likely would not have seen this movie if it hadn’t been recommended to me by a longtime friend. While I didn’t like it as much as she did, it was a very good recommendation and a film that I’m glad that I saw.
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