Review of On Swift Horses, directed by Daniel Minahan

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

There was a period throughout 2025 where I was left unemployed, and I was so incredibly grateful to be in the financial situation where if I wanted to take a break and step away from the grind, I could. I didn’t intend for it to be as long as it was, as I was applying to over 300 jobs and couldn’t find a position. Not a great time to job hunt during one of one of the worst job markets in decades.

Anyways, I did find a job, but in the period where I was still freelancing and doing contract work, I spent a lot of my free time catching up on the movies, books, and television shows I’ve been meaning to watch. On my Goodreads alone, I have over two thousands books on my to-read list. I know and acknowledge I’ll never get to them all, but a girl can dream. We only have so much time in our lives though.

This is my last blog post about things I watched before starting my job! That’s kind of like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders in different ways. For those who are new here and landed on this page through the magical and mythical powers of Google, I spent quite a bit of time just freelancing and doing contract work when I was ready to try out an office job. There were a lot of blog posts that started out with describing my dilemma.

I’m about a month in and am quite happy so far. I am trying to find time to write these blog posts and stay somewhat consistent, but, as I wrote before, this is the last blog post from the before times, and it was a movie I’ve been meaning to see for a while. I’ve been obsessed with Diego Calva since he was in Babylon, so I kept my eye on his upcoming projects for a hot minute.

So I knew about On Swift Horses since it was announced as being a thing, but I didn’t get the chance to watch it until it was added onto Netflix in late 2025. I watched it on a lonely Tuesday night, finally watching the film after years of anticipation.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to keep rambling in the introduction.

A young couple settles in California during the fifties, but the arrival of the husband’s brother sparks a new kind of queer story.

The first main couple in this movie are Muriel and Lee. When Lee comes back from the Korean War, they decide to take their relationship to the next step and try moving out west for more opportunities. They land on San Diego as the place where they should start over, and it proves to be quite the good decision when things start to look up financially for them both.

But when Lee’s younger brother Julius arrives on the scene, it marks a shifting point. Lee wants Julius to stay with them in San Diego and build a life for himself there, but he has other plans. Instead, Julius decides to go to Las Vegas and try his hand there. He finds a job at a casino and proves to be quite good at that, but something else happens at work: he meets Henry.

Henry becomes Julius’ lover and confidant, and they work well together when they’re at the casino. No one knows about their relationship though, as this is the fifties still, and he doesn’t tell his brothe ror Muriel the extent of what’s happening in Vegas to him. Later on, though, the casino owners are going to find out something and it’s going to come at a cost of their relationship and safety.

Meanwhile, back in San Diego, Muriel finds a different kind of love on her own. When Lee and her are driving home one day, she stops after seeing a sign. She goes into the house and tries to buy the product advertised on the sign, and that’s how she meets Sandra.

Muriel and Sandra end up engaging in their own queer relationship, with Lee having no idea that his wife is going off to have sexual relationships with another woman. At the same time, Muriel starts finding success in betting on racehorses and makes a lot of money, which is what allows her husband and her to have more financial freedom in California.

A lot of the problems that these characters face will emerge again later on in the movie, creating some angst, although I found these situations to be heavily contrived. The pacing of this movie is pretty off, and, while the premise is really interesting to me, I found that it was beating a dead horse by the end of the film.

Overall Thoughts

I’ve already mentioned a little bit of what I’ve thought already. I really wanted to like this movie based on the premise, but I thought that it might’ve had its attention diverted by splitting between Julius and Muriel’s stories. I think maybe they should have been different movies, or this movie should have solely focused on Julius’ story because Lee and Muriel simply weren’t as interesting as what he was doing.

I would have loved it I think if it had done that, but this is my personal taste. I could see how someone else might like this movie a lot more than I did. Which is okay—taste is so incredibly subjective, and what might not be my favorite movie could be someone else’s all-time favorite film. Neither of us are wrong for what we like.

Anyways, I think if you’re interested in this movie, give it a shot and watch it for yourself. Form your own opinions independent of film critics and bloggers—this could be a movie you love. I just didn’t love it myself, which is fine!