On Swift Horses is probably a movie very few people have heard of or had on their radar – and unfortunately, it’s probably better off that way. Rarely does a film come along that fumbles this degree of rising talent, with Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, and Will Poulter leading the cast.
Based on the 2019 novel of the same name, On Swift Horses tells a story of self-discovery, primarily centered around the characters’ sexuality: Elordi’s Julius falls in love with Henry, played by Diego Calva, while Jones’s Muriel has an affair with Sandra, played by Sasha Calle. I cannot speak to the merits of the writing in the novel, but the adapted screenplay is just plain bad. The dialogue tries to be both metaphorical and abstract, yet ends up feeling deeply generic.
Another glaring issue with the film is the pacing – it’s excruciatingly slow in the moments that don’t matter and rushes through the ones that do. I’m usually a fan of slower, character-driven dramas, but this one lacks nuance. The worst offender is the romance between Elordi and Calva – a relationship established in mere minutes, with no real journey toward self-actualization or organic development. In the end, I was not convinced by any of the central relationships and had no emotional investment in them.
I typically have no issue with actors portraying characters not of their sexual orientation – we recently saw a fantastic example with Daniel Craig in 2024’s Queer – but On Swift Horses has me reconsidering. Elordi and Jones could not overcome the thinness of the script, and both of their respective affairs were portrayed with a shocking amount of blandness. The visuals didn’t help, either. Films of this nature often have a grainy, textured appeal, but this one just looked cheap.
On Swift Horses feels like a film that had a lot of promise during development but completely fell apart in execution. I want to be an advocate for smaller, quieter films, but I just cannot find anything to genuinely recommend about this one.
