Three years ago, as I was driving through Southwest Philadelphia on my way back from Bartram's Garden to the old homestead in Haverford Township, I came upon a sight I never would have expected in that déclassé section of the city: two men riding horses on a narrow side street. Shortly thereafter I read a story about a man named Malik Divers and the horse-riding club he had established in that part of the city, which explained everything I needed to know at the time. Fast forward to 2021, and Philly indie filmmaker Ricky Staub, having encountered real-life urban cowboys and hung with them at their stables in the Strawberry Mansion section of North Philadelphia, has made a movie about them, roughly following G. Neri's novel, Ghetto Cowboy, itself based on a 2005 article in Life Magazine entitled "Street Riders." And when I heard that the great British actor Idris Elba had signed on to star and produce the film, I made it a priority to watch it as soon as I could after it was released on Netflix. And I'm very glad I did.
In terms of its plot, the film is boilerplate Hollywood fare: troubled teen is faced with two options for his future, one criminal and destructive, the other redeeming, if not necessarily financially lucrative. In this instance, a troubled teen named Cole (Caleb McLaughlin) is expelled from his Detroit High School for getting into one too many fights, and is tearfully driven to North Philadelphia to spend the summer with his estranged father, Harp (Elba), who lives in a tiny rowhouse on Page Street in Strawberry Mansion with a horse―in the living room!―and only some beer, soda, and a couple of slices of cheese in the fridge. Harp is the leader of a group of urban cowboys who are based in one of the last remaining stables in the city, located on Fletcher Street in Strawberry Mansion. Cole, though, as one can imagine, is unimpressed with both his dad and his spartan living arrangements, and hankers to go back to Detroit. While on the street the next day, his cousin, Smush (Jharrel Jerome), notices him and picks him up. The problem? Smush, though friendly and happy to see his old mate, is a drug dealer. Even worse, he is skimming profits off his boss Jalen (played with chilling effectiveness by Michael Ta'Bon). When Harp finds out that Cole is hanging with Smush, he kicks him out; to avoid having to sleep on the gunfire-laden streets, Cole agrees to help out at the stables―which humorously involves, much to the displeasure of Cole, shoveling large amounts of manure from the stalls―while continuing to hang with Smush on the side. Of course, we all know how this ends: Smush is gunned down on the street by a kid on a bike, and his murder becomes the start of Cole's turnaround and maturation.
However, this standard Hollywood arc is simply the framework for the real work of the film, which is made easier by the extraordinary performances of the cast. As leads, Elba and McLaughlin are excellent. Elba, as is obvious from his roles as Stringer Bell in "The Wire" and Charles Miner in "The Office," certainly has no problem playing American characters. But he does especially well in the tricky business of sounding like an authentic Philadelphian, which he learned from listening to tapes of Fletcher Street veteran Eric Miller, who was gunned down in a home invasion a week before production of the film commenced (and to whom the film is dedicated). Moreover, Elba is an actor who is as powerful in his silence as he is in dialogue. Not that his dialogues lack power. Particularly moving was his soul-baring discussion with his son in which, with John Coltrane's 1961 recording, "I Wish I Knew," playing on the turntable in the background, he tells his son why and how he named him after the neighborhood's most famous resident, the saxman who lived in a 3-story rowhouse on 33rd Street just south of Oxford from 1952-1958. McLaughlin, for his part, plays his stereotyped role with skill and subtlety. He is a talent to watch out for in future. Also excellent, as expected, is the wonderful Lorraine Toussaint as neighborhood prayer warrior, and fellow cowgirl, Nessie. But what sets the film apart is its use of real-life Fletcher Street riders in supporting roles, who bring their stories and experiences to the film in ways Hollywood pros could not. Of these authentic Philadelphia riders, particularly excellent were Ivannah-Mercedes as Cole's love interest, Esha, and wheel chair-bound Jamil Prattis as Parris (who is the first I have heard to utter the Philadelphia-ism "jawn" in a Hollywood film). The latter's screen presence is astonishing, coming as it does from an amateur.
As predictable as the story-line may be, thankfully the emotional and material center of the movie lies, not in Harp's standard "tough love"/Cole's coming-of-age saga, but elsewhere, namely, with the story of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club (FSURC), who, as the closing credits mention, face losing the large, vacant parcel of land they use for their horses and riding. What this club embodies and represents gives the lie to much of what white America takes for granted in its mythical self-understanding. I was raised largely around 7 miles from where this movie was filmed. As a lad, my exposure to Strawberry Mansion was mainly gained from the drive between my house and Connie Mack Stadium, the home of my beloved Phillies, at 21st and Lehigh in adjacent Swampoodle. The neighborhood was in decline in those days, more than 50 years ago, but the substantial, ornate 3-story rowhouses along 33rd Street across from Fairmount Park were still largely in good repair, a far cry from the gap-toothed dereliction one finds there today. What happened? Most fail to remember that Strawberry Mansion was, in the days prior to World War II, a largely Jewish, middle-to-lower middle class neighborhood. But then came the rampant deindustrialization that affected all older manufacturing cities with union work forces, among which Philadelphia was, apart from Chicago, the largest and most prominent. So-called "white flight" ensued for those who had good jobs and could move elsewhere, leaving behind a population with little means and even less opportunity, the human detritus of cold-hearted American capitalism. Watching Concrete Cowboy, with its images of shabby dwellings, spectacularly derelict factories, and weed-strewn lots brought home to me, as only a good film can, the world of difference between the realities and opportunities life offers for residents of North Philly and those, like me, who hail from the city's famed Main Line. And it is a difference that most Americans still need to realize and face with honesty. "Equal opportunity?" Please. If one is honest with oneself, it isn't hard to imagine why angry young men like Cole are angry and tempted to follow the path taken by the ill-fated Smush. And I hope I don't hear any more Pelagian, bootstrap moralism from white, Calvinist Christians whose theology should have taught them better. As Harp, near the end of the story, rhetorically asks his son, who is a boy supposed to grow up to be when he's warned his whole life to watch his back on the streets?
But the most salient characteristic of these urban cowboys is obvious at first glance: they are black. In American mythology, the Cowboy is a lone hero. And he is almost always white. Just the image of Harp and his fellow riders making their way on North Philly's narrow streets on horseback and wearing cowboy hats―remember that the famous Stetson hat was made right here in Philadelphia at a massive, long-gone factory complex in Kensington―is jarring to any lover of, say, My Darling Clementine or even Unforgiven (jarring, yes, but also inspiring, as is vividly shown at the end of the movie through the beautiful smile of a young boy in a bus who sees the Fletcher Street crew riding in the lot along the side of the road). But, as the Fletcher Street riders tell us, in a wonderful exposition scene over a "campfire" roaring in an empty metal barrel, things were not always so, that the "Hollywood John Wayne bulls**t myth" was just that, a myth (as Nessie says, "Hollywood has whitewashed us … right out of the history books"), and that even the Lone Ranger himself was based on the exploits of a black cowboy named Bass Reeves. Indeed, historians estimate that roughly one quarter of all cowboys were African American. Even Philadelphia's black cowboys, though seemingly an anomaly, have a long history dating back more than 100 years. What happened? The city decided that horses were no longer needed, that trucks were the new way to go. And, despite stable after stable being closed, the Fletcher Street riders remain, with a future as precarious as their past was insecure …
Which brings us to the primary threat to this venerable tradition, namely, gentrification. The threat is brought up first by rider-turned-cop Leroy (Method Man), who warns them that neighbors' complaints have been brought to the city's attention, and that the "new condos" on Oxford Street in gentrifying Brewerytown across the Amtrak tracks to the south, the wave of the future, are only 5 blocks away. (As an aside, the response of one of the cowboys―"That's a long way for those skinny, hipster-ass, latte [folks] to be walkin'"― is a classic of contemptuous, precipitant dismissal). Later, after Smush's murder, we see the city taking the expected action and removing the horses to the city stables on Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive in preparation for demolishing the ramshackle Fletcher Street stables. The film thus does a good job of portraying the systemic racism faced by minority, especially black, communities in Philadelphia as everywhere else in the United States.
To my mind, the most important myth shattered by Concrete Cowboy is the persistent one, long past its expiry date, of the "rugged individual," exemplified in the pictures by John Wayne and other Hollywood cowboys on the range of the Old West. Staub deliberately evokes the classic Westerns, not only with time-worn clichés like the breaking of wild horses and "campfires," but also with stunning cinematography including spectacular sunrises and sunsets against the backdrop of North Philly's venerable rowhouses. But the cowboys of North Philly don't ride alone; they don't fight the authorities alone. As Elba's Harp preaches―and "preaches" is not too strong a word―while the riders witness the city about to take down their stables, "Let 'em take the stables … because they can't take who we are as a people. Home ain't a place; it's a fam. That's what makes us Cowboys." In thus deconstructing and reconstructing the American cowboy myth, Harp hits on an essential truth: to succeed, they must do so, not as rugged, take no prisoners individuals, but rather as a people, as a community. That's a lesson I hope America learns, and sooner rather than too late.
Concrete Cowboy (Rated R: language, drug use): ★★★☆
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