Buckle Brothers (2005)

Director:

Marquette Williams

Writer:

Marquette Williams (writer)

Genre:

Documentary

Tagline:

A young bull rider teaches inner city kids the cowboy lifestyle in order to save them from the streets of Compton, CA.

Plot:

Buckle Brothers is the tale of four young adults Lil Ron 23, Yah-Ya 18, Mike 18, Jazmine 18, from South Central, Los Angeles and Compton, CA who have found a different kind of hope in the form of the cowboy lifestyle. |

Cast

Chauncey McClain	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jazmine Bennet	...	Jazmine Bennet
Mike Gilbeaux Jr.	...	Mike Gilbeaux Jr.
Ron Jennings Jr.	...	Lil Ron Jennings
Yah-Ya O'Neil	...	Yah-Ya O'Neil

Runtime:

USA:75 min (original version) | 79 min (DVD version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

USA:TV-PG

Filming Locations:

Chico, California, USA

Company:

Neapolitan Pictures

short of an 8-second ride

This is a first-time effort by director/writer Marquette Williams. As such, it's not bad, but still looks like an initial effort at documentary making.

The concept and subject are interesting: inner city kids taking to the rodeo instead of the street. But there's not enough of the rodeo culture, almost enough of the personal stories, and almost no view into the "workings" of the competition itself.

There is a heavy reliance on the dialog of the cowboys themselves to explain what's going on, and much of this is hard to understand. More "talking heads" could have been used to describe the industry, the cultural backdrop and the rodeo environment.

It is visceral, though. More than any movie treatment I've seen on the rodeo, you get a tremendous sense of the power, excitement and explosive danger of the bull-riding event.

This is still a good "message" movie, showing an alternative to the gang-banging lifestyle so often celebrated in the popular movie world. It's worth a watch, and worth waiting for Williams' next work.