"Barstool Cowboy" Review - Written by Kelsey Zukowski

Starring: Tim Woodward, Rachel Lien
Written & Directed By: Mark Thimjam
Released: 2008
Grade: C-

Barstool Cowboy falls in to the trap of the indie film: the notion that just by sticking two people in a room together it will have some significance tied to it. With a situation like this, the film demands character powered context, understanding, and growth. With Barstool Cowboy we really aren’t given any of this so in the end it doesn’t really have anything to offer us aside from a pessimistic view that is the outlook of our character in the very beginning. This in itself proves that the film doesn’t go anywhere, it ends where it began, making the entire time in between, which is the bulk of the movie, a complete waste of time.

Mick (Woodward) is a middle-aged out of work cowboy who also just got dumped. He is taking the break up very hard and feels that the only logical thing for him to do is to stay away from the world outside of a low key bar where he feels at home. So Mick vows for the next 3 months he will stay on the barstool and just keep drinking. He is staying at a motel for the time being and aside from sleeping there, he is planning on staying at the bar every other minute. Suddenly, a young girl, an art student named Arcy (Lien) is spotted outside, drawing the bar. Mick walks out there to try to find out what she is doing since a lot of the men inside are bothered by her being there. Arcy has Mick pose for her in front of the bar. He invites her in for a drink and they begin to talk. Mick invites her back to his apartment. Soon this becomes a habit for the two of them. They start spending every day together in Mick’s motel and go out occasionally.

Arcy has to get back to her art though and this gives Mick the opportunity to look for a job. He finds one that he is interested in. It is construction work, which is good enough for him. Mick’s interview ends up going very well. He gets the job, there is only one problem: he needs to pass a drug test that day or he will lose this chance. Mick knows that he is not clean and he would never pass. Luckily, he has experienced this type of situation before. He calls up a friend of his who is willing to give him some clean pee. Mick than tapes it to his leg and keeps it heated until he gets to the clinic. This plan backfiring is not even the worst part of his day. He comes back to see that Arcy and his friend have went behind his back and completely betrayed him. This puts Mick at the same point where he was before, back on his barstool believing that love is an unnecessary evil, vowing to stay there, again, for the next 3 months.

Tim Woodward and Rachel Lien both did okay in their roles, but it was nothing special. The script was very flat, but with the combination of this and the unemotional performances, there really weren’t characters to connect with. Lien did a little better than Woodward since at least we are able to see that she was a free spirit, which helped give a little bit of life to the film. It was still not nearly enough to save the movie. Just the way the two actors/characters looked I couldn’t help but think of Evan Rachel Wood and Edward Norton in Down in The Valley. There is really no comparison between the two as the latter is such a superior film that uses craft, understanding, and discovery not to mention the enormous talents and charisma that both Wood and Norton show. It is not even that the two films had all that much in common. They are in different settings and take a different route although the older unemployed cowboy and the young independent spirit are there in both cases. I think it is mostly the images between the characters in the two movies that looked so similar. With there not being nearly as much in Barstool Cowboy, this was an image that hurt the film further.

In the beginning there is a man in the bar who looks out, seeing Arcy, and complains about the weirdo artsy kids. He talks about them like they are not even human and are nothing but trouble. Even their style and the way they dress is criticized. This all is pretty ridiculous since creativity and uniqueness is targeted, attempting to belittle and generalize this group. At first it is easy enough to laugh this notion off since the character who is saying this seems pretty ridiculous himself. Later in the movie, he is proven to be right and Mick sides with him. At this point, an altered clone based on Arcy and these stereotypes shows up again, coming back to the generalizations and the troublemaker theme. There is no basis for this and it seems completely out of the blue. Couldn’t they have chosen a biker girl or a heavy metal singer? These might be clichés for this trait, but at least they are clichés that make sense. No, writer/director Mark Thimjam made her an artist to try to add an illusion of creativity and emotion to the film, while the illusion was created, it proved to be a false one.

I really didn’t hate Barstool Cowboy, I was just let down by it. It was mostly frustrating because I kept on waiting for it to go somewhere, but it never did. The part with Mick’s drug test scam was actually entertaining, but only mildly so. I think I would have been able to appreciate it more if I felt I really knew the characters, especially Mick. Mick was just so underexposed. Sure, we knew I few facts about him: he is unemployed, heartbroken, and set on giving up on love and numbing everything with alcohol. That was really it though. We never got the chance to get inside of his head, to understand what he was thinking, to see what he was feeling, to get him as a person. Because of that he came off as lifeless and very unreal: just an underdeveloped character in a movie. Arcy was largely a mystery too, which could have actually worked in the film’s favor. If we could have been put in Mick’s place, seeing things through his eyes, this mystery girl could have been as Mick saw her, a mysterious attraction that caught his curiousity. Arcy’s motives are pretty unclear in the film. Does she really like Mick or is she just trying to be friends with him? Why has she chosen an older, unemployed numb cowboy to befriend? Who is she, what is going on in her life outside of Mick, how does she see the world? These are just some of the few many unanswered questions about her in the film. You can’t have a character based film without going in to the characters, simple as that. Barstool Cowboy wants us to care, but is a far too underdeveloped film that is lacking in nearly every department. It is an okay film, but just as Mick wishes to be numb from alcohol, the viewer is left numb as well, as nothing stands out or makes you feel anything.