The Rider (2018) on Netflix
Brady, a rodeo rider, has a weakened right hand and seizures after an accident, and doctors warn that riding will make them worse. He works at a grocery store, breaking in horses.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.4/1022,356 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brady lives with his father Wayne and his teenaged sister Lilly on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where the family is poor. He was a rising rodeo rider until an accident damaged his brain, leaving his right hand weak and causing seizures; doctors tell him that more riding will only make his condition worse. He visits Lane, a friend who lives in a care facility after a similar injury. Wayne drinks and gambles away the household's money, and he once sold Brady's horse Gus to pay for their trailer. Brady takes a job at a grocery store to help support the family, and he earns money training horses. With his savings he hopes to buy a horse of his own, a temperamental one named Apollo.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Rider (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Rider is loosely based on Brady Jandreau's real rodeo injury: on April 1, 2016 a bucking horse stepped on his head, cutting a three-inch, knuckle-deep gash in his skull and grinding manure and sand into his brain, causing a seizure and a three-day induced coma. The film contains footage of the accident and shows his scar.
- Chloé Zhao decided to make The Rider in August 2016 and shot from September with a crew of only six, covering production costs herself on her and then-boyfriend Joshua James Richards' credit cards and lighting scenes with natural light and Walmart LED strips.
- Filming took place at local horse sales, rodeos and auctions for free, using the real cowboys there as perfectly costumed extras whom Zhao said she could not have cast or staged.
