Daisy Edgar-Jones, Daniel Minahan, Diego Calva, drama, film festivals, Jacob Elordi, Kat Cunning, LGBTQ, movies, On Swift Horses, reviews, Sasha Calle, SXSW, SXSW Film and TV Festival, SXSW Film Festival, TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival, Will Poulter
April 23, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Daniel Minahan
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1956 to 1957, in California and in Nevada, the dramatic film “On Swift Horses” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A bored and unhappy wife pines over her bisexual/queer brother-in-law, while she starts a secret affair with a female neighbor.
Culture Audience: “On Swift Horses” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and the book on which the movie is based, and are interested in dramas about queer relationships in the 1950s.
Even with a talented cast, “On Swift Horses” is a superficial drama about five people who have sexual entanglements based mostly on infatuation. The movie is adapted from a novel but seems more inspired by pretty postcards with vapid thoughts. “On Swift Horses” tries but fails to convince that any of the main characters are experiencing true love. The lover who is the most “sought-after” in the story is actually selfish and unreliable and is considered attractive mostly because of his physical appearance.
Directed by Daniel Minahan and written by Bryce Kass, “On Swift Horses” is based on Shannon Pufahl’s debut 2019 novel of the same name. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “On Swift Horses” takes place from 1956 to 1957, in California and in Nevada, with filming taking place in California. The nearly two-hour run time of “On Swift Horses” suggests that it could have been a sweeping and engaging epic romantic film. Instead, it’s mostly plodding and dull, with contrived-looking sex scenes that fizzle more than sizzle.
“On Swift Horses” begins with one of these sex scenes by showing military man Lee Walker (played by Will Poulter) having sex with his girlfriend Muriel (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) at the Kansas house that Muriel inherited from her deceased mother. It’s obvious that Muriel isn’t really enjoying the sex. She seems to be going through the motions out of obligation. Lee is on leave from military service in the Korean War and has to go back in three days. He asks Muriel to marry him. She says no.
Muriel certainly perks up when she meets Lee’s younger brother Julius (played by Jacob Elordi), a handsome rebel who’s got “heartbreaker” written all over him. As soon as Julius comes to visit, and he meets Muriel for the first time, it’s obvious that Muriel is much more interested in Julius than she is in Lee. (The “meet cute” moment between Julius and Muriel happens he asks her to toss him a cigarette.) Julius and Muriel slow dance in front of Lee, who seems oblivious or in denial about the mutual attraction between Muriel and Julius.
That’s all you need to know about what type of person that Muriel is: She has no qualms about possibly causing a rift between two brothers for her own self-centered reasons. Julius is even more selfish than Muriel. “On Swift Horses” has an annoying way of treating these two toxic people as star-crossed “unlucky in love” lovers whom viewers are supposed to root for, when anyone with enough life experience can see how much emotional damage that Muriel and Julius cause and how Muriel and Julius don’t deserve admiration.
During Julius’ visit with Lee and Muriel, it’s mentioned that Julius also served in the military during the Korean War, but he has been discharged. Julius is queer or bisexual. Lee has known for years that Julius is not heterosexual, but Lee and no one else in the movie say the words “queer,” “gay” or “bisexual” out loud. People who are not heterosexual in the movie are just politely called “different.” It’s a very unrealistic portrayal of how queerness was described in 1950s America, when hateful homophobia was not only openly expressed but it was also legal.
Julius’ sexual attraction to men is probably why Lee doesn’t see Julius as a threat to Lee’s relationship with Muriel. In his ignorance, Lee probably thinks Julius is gay, not bisexual. Lee (who is socially rigid but an overall good guy) is the only person of the movie’s five main characters who shows unconditional love to his partner, even though that love is wasted on someone who doesn’t love him and doesn’t hesitate to cheat on him.
The insipid dialogue starts to pollute the movie within the first 10 minutes. In a scene during Julius’ visit of Lee and Muriel, the three of them play poker. Julius says, “The thing about cards is poker isn’t just poker.” Before he serves the deck of cards, Julius babbles some more nonsense by saying that a card is a symbol of time.
Muriel looks at Julius as if he’s a poker philosopher extraordinaire. But her fantasy about him sweeping her off of her feet comes crashing back down to reality when it becomes obvious that Julius is a drifter who has no intention of settling down in a committed relationship. Sometime after the poker game, Lee proposes marriage again to Muriel while Julius is in the same room. This time, Muriel says yes.
If Julius is jealous, he doesn’t show it. Lee wants to settle down with Muriel and buy a house in Arroyo Canyon in California. In order to get the money to buy a house, Lee asks Muriel to sell her childhood house in Kansas. Muriel is reluctant to sell the house because the house is the last connection she has to her family.
“On Swift Horses'” then abruptly switches to showing Lee and Muriel as a married couple living in California. Muriel has been writing letters to Julius and asking him to come back to California. Not long after Lee finishes his military service, he and Muriel decide to move to San Diego. Lee becomes a factory worker. Muriel works as a waitress at a diner.
The newlyweds are financially struggling and get tired of living in cramped living quarters. And so, Muriel changes her mind about selling her childhood Kansas home. Lee and Muriel use the money from the sale to buy the middle-class home that they want. Muriel secretly keeps some of the leftover money from the sale in a hiding place in the home. She later hides some other cash that she gets from betting on horse races without Lee’s knowledge.
Muriel acts bi-curious when she spends some time at Del Mar Racing (a horse racetrack), after she has overheard some horse-betting tips from customers at the diner. Muriel ends up winning money from horse-race bets and notices that a woman named Gail (played by Kat Cunning) is flirting with her at the racetrack. Muriel is somewhat surprised by this attention but she doesn’t reject it. Gail (a socialite who’s married to a much-older, wealthy man) is a frequent customer at a local lesbian bar, which is where Muriel goes out of curiosity and to see how far things might go between her and Gail.
Julius tells Muriel in letter correspondence that he’s moving to the California city of Stockton, which is about 460 miles northeast of San Diego. Even with this long distance, that’s all Muriel needs to hear to get excited that Julius could be in her life. Julius asks her for money for this relocation. She sends the money to Julius, but he uses the money to move to Las Vegas instead. Muriel is hurt when she finds out that Julius told Lee that it was good that Lee married Muriel because “that sad girl needs somebody to tell her what to do.”
“On Swift Horses” then meanders along as it shows what Julius did when he was in Las Vegas. He ends up meeting Henry (played by Diego Calva), another drifter/hustler type, on Julius’ first day of his job as a security worker at a casino. Julius and Henry are co-workers whose job is to hide in a secret room overlooking the casino floor and look out for any gamblers who are cheating during card games. Julius and Henry then have to report any cheaters to the casino’s security bouncers, who rough up and throw out the cheaters.
Henry flirts with Julius and immediately figures out that Julius is attracted to him. Henry makes the first move when he and Julius become lovers. It’s hard to believe that Henry and Julius (who are both self-absorbed and opportunistic) are really in love because their relationship is based mostly on lust and convenience. Henry and Julius eventually decide to become con artists together by going to other casinos and cheating at card games in the same ways that they’ve seen other cheaters have done it.
Meanwhile, Muriel (who’s still pining over Julius but she doesn’t want to admit it) meets androgynous Sandra (played by Sasha Calle) when Muriel and Lee decide to move to the San Fernando Valley and look for houses there. Sandra has a mini-farm on her property and sells things like olives and eggs. Sandra’s house, which has been in her family for 60 years, is near the house that Lee and Muriel end up buying.
The first time that Muriel and Sandra meet, there’s sexual tension between them and very unsubtle homoerotic subtexts. Sandra tells Muriel to taste some of her olives. When Muriel does and spits out one of the olive pits, Sandra holds out her hand and expects Muriel to spit the olive pit onto Sandra’s hand. You know where all of this is going to lead, of course.
The relationship with Muriel and Sandra is described as “love” in the marketing materials for “On Swift Horses,” but it sure doesn’t look like mutual love. Sandra is the one who seems to be falling in love with Muriel, but Muriel acts like Sandra is a just a fling and tells Sandra that their affair is just about having sexual fun. If this sounds like spoiler information, it’s only to let viewers know that there really is no great love affair in this disappointing and torpid movie, which pulls an irritating bait and switch in many ways.
Worst of all, “On Swift Horses” awkwardly fumbles the movie’s last 15 minutes, turning the film into an unrealistic mushfest where two people desperately look for Julius at the same time—as if disrespectful fraudster Julius is the answer to their problems and unhappiness. Edgar-Jones and Calle do their best to try to give their respective characters some depth in “On Swift Horses,” but they can’t overcome the maudlin screenplay that reduces potential romances to scenes of insecure people using each other for sexual companionship. The other principal cast members are even more stymied by portraying characters with cardboard personalities. And ironically, this movie with the word “swift” in the title has slow and drab pacing. By the time “On Swift Horses” lumbers along to its corny and vague ending, you probably won’t care about seeing these characters ever again.
Sony Pictures Classics will release “On Swift Horses” in U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on April 14, 2025.