Like many images from extreme sport, a shaking, spinning, bucking 1,800-pound bull tossing a man less than a tenth its size is a marvel to behold.
In “Bullrider,” director Josh Aronson and cinematographer Brett Wiley give us plenty of chances to drop our jaws.
The tag line for this movie, which follows a season of the Professional Bull Riders Inc. circuit ending with the 2004 world championship in Las Vegas, elicits a grin: “No animals were hurt during the making of this film. We wish we could say the same thing about the humans.”
We wish we could say that the documentary is as wry and provocative as that caveat.
Instead “Bullrider” takes too earnest a distance from its chaps-wearing athletes to get up close and probing.
Ten months, 45 riders, 28 cities later, viewers who are not already fans will not feel like they have gotten a firm grip on what makes these men one-hand a rope atop a quaking mountain of flesh for, they hope, eight seconds.
What they will know is that like NASCAR, there’s not an inch of available surface left untouched by some sponsor – except the bull’s hide. How could they have missed that branding opportunity?
It’s not that the characters aren’t intriguing. Two-time world champion Adriano Moraes of Brazil has humble appeal. Twenty-one-year-
old Texan Mike Lee and Justin McBride, 24, suggest the new cowboy isn’t any more loquacious than the ones of yore.
One would hope for a better strategy from Aronson, who directed the Oscar-nominated doc “Sound and Fury” (2000). He could have borrowed some tricks from winter’s “First Descent,” which broke free of its snowboarders’ “awesome” chatter by talking to family members. He shows us wives and kids. But we don’t hear from them.
More than once, the riders get compared to gladiators. Beyond the grandiosity of that claim exists a blood-sport analogy that is spot on.
“There’s a crowd, an arena, a beast and a man,” says likable Moraes. “Every time we do good, they love it. Every time the bull does good, they love it. The crowd always wins.”
Indeed, the fans in the stands were an obvious, impassioned group to interview.
Lee comes closest to revealing the deeply mysterious. After a ride, he does an odd little jig, then kneels down to thank the Lord. In interviews it’s clear the young Texan’s Christian faith is integral to his lunatic profession.
** | “Bullrider”
PG Some material may not be suitable for children|1 hour, 25 minutes|DOCUMENTARY| Directed by Josh Aronson; photography by Brett Wiley; featuring Adriano Moraes, Mike Lee, Justin McBride, Adam and Gilbert Carrillo, Leah Garcia, Ty Murray, Todd Pierce |Opens today at the UA Colorado Center 9.
