“Odd-couple” films are as old as the hills and can encompass any genre from action-comedy (Lethal Weapon), dramas (Flawless), and horror (Freddy vs. Jason). Bull is one such example. Odd couple is the genre and the mode of expression is low-key indie. This combination can be very, very deadly, but thankfully, Bull is so honest in its execution and precise and unique in its location and mood that it’s easily lifted above most mundane offerings and settles comfortably into the rarified “fine film.”

Bull centers on the friendship between two taciturn, wounded individuals: Kris, a 14-year-old white girl, cared for by her grandmother while her mother waits for release from jail, and Abe, an aging black rodeo bull rider who now has a gig distracting bulls from injuring fallen riders in the ring. His injured body is a mess, he lives alone, and he drinks too much. 

Their relationship begins acrimoniously in the beginning: Kris’s dog kills one of Abe’s chickens and Abe threatens to shoot the dog. Perhaps in retaliation, Kris breaks into Abe’s house and has a drunken revel with her friends. He catches her fleeing his house and demands she helps clean Abe’s place. This begins the dance of two cautious people, one with no real stability in her life, the other at the tail end of a career to which he’s devoted his entire life.

As Kris continues to help Abe, the ice between the two begins to melt, Abe slowly opens up his world to Kris, and she becomes fascinated. Bull riding becomes just as much an escape for her as it is for Abe, and he changes from indifferent to offering the sort of sympathetic tough love that is missing in Kris’s life. Abe has someone to mentor as he sees the same hunger for bull riding in her eyes as he has.

What really knocks this over the edge is a quiet, observational sort of filmmaking. The script by director Annie Silverstein and co-writer Johnny McAllister unravels the story slowly and tenderly. Their setting is one rarely seen, a low-income exurb of Houston, populated with people of all backgrounds who have very little prospects of upward mobility and stability. Kris’s mom is in jail indefinitely, and her grandmother is sick and can barely control her, while the teen has become the de facto caretaker to her younger sister. Meanwhile, Abe becomes too much of an insurance liability for the larger rodeos after an injury, and he is cut loose. This allows him to go back to his roots and work the all-black rodeo circuit that he came up in. There is a rich history of black cowboys that has been underrepresented in our history, and this movie offers a fascinating look.

The acting is simply superb. Again, quiet and understated. Rob Morgan as Abe gives one of the most powerful performances seen in a long time: taciturn and proud, with a body wrecked by years of being tossed and tumbled. A sequence where he is fills a bathtub with ice to ease his constant pain is a master class in physicality. The scene is shot with his back to the camera, yet you feel his every ache.

Newcomer Amber Havard, as Kris, nearly matches him. She spends most of the time stone-faced and joyless, carefully picking out her responses and then recklessly cutting loose. There is a late moment late where she breaks into a smile, and it’s like the clouds have parted after a flood. Kris is consistently emotionally negotiating the situation, but she clearly feels joy when she’s at the rodeo and spending time with the people there. 

The film starts amping up the melodrama ever so slightly in the last quarter, to its detriment. Up to that point, there is such a natural, easy flow that even the slightest emotional manipulation feels like a thunderclap, but it ends with a lovely, ambiguous, yet hopeful ending that gently nudges the needle back to its natural position.