KILL THE JOCKEY - Mark Reviews Movies

Kill the Jockey, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 1, 2025

Co-writer/director Luis Ortega's Kill the Jockey is so strange that it's difficult to nail down what it's meant to be about. That would be fine, of course, especially since Ortega indulges in a bit of the surreal with this odd little story about—to sum it up as simply as possible—a jockey trying to avoid the gangsters searching for him. With that approach, though, comes a different issue: The movie takes itself so unseriously that it's tough to determine if the filmmakers actually care about what the story is supposed to be about.

Certainly, this tale is genuinely amusing at first, because of those eccentricities. We meet Remo (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), the eponymous jockey, who is, was, or could be one of the best in the sport, except for his issues with substance abuse.

A couple of henchmen for crime boss Rubén Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho) have to drag him out of a Buenos Aires bar, where he's comfortably passed out in at a table, before an upcoming race. Upon arriving at the track, Remo sneaks into the veterinarian's office, nabs some horse medication from a cabinet, and mixes the drug with a splash of whiskey from his locker. There's a very good and surprising joke that shows how badly his addictions are affecting Remo's racing career, but let's just say that, for all the build-up to the opening race, the jockey can't even get himself out of the starting gate.

From there, the plot seems easy enough to comprehend. Rubén wants Remo to succeed, even though the jockey's girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó), who also rides horses on Rubén's team (It almost seems as if he has a stake in every horse at the track, which scans for a man as corrupt as he is), is technically racing better than him, since she can finish and, well, start a race.

Abril is pregnant, by the way and by way of Remo, and she's currently trying to decide if she should have a baby or terminate the pregnancy in order to continue with her career. For his part, Remo wants to be a parent with Abril, but she's hesitant about that, telling the jockey that the only way she'd consider it is if Remo died and was somehow reborn as someone else.

Presumably, there's another complication to Abril's decision, because Rubén has spent years towing around a baby with him in order to soften his public image. Nobody, except for those closest to him, seems to notice that the baby hasn't aged in all that time. Those who have noticed don't even want to consider the two primary questions that come with this realization: Where is Rubén getting these babies, and what happens to the ones he ends up replacing?

There's an obvious but mostly suggested darkness to the setup of this world, in other words, that seems to start and extend from the gangster from even before the story begins. Some of that is hinted at after the real plot is set in motion. Rubén wants to Remo, his prized jockey, to succeed, despite the multiple problems the rider has and his apparent efforts to intentionally or indirectly sabotage his career. The mobster blocks Remo from drinking (locking him in a stable before the race and cleaning out his locked) and has a winning horse from Japan flown in for the next race.

Even so, Remo finds a way to get drunk before hitting the track and ends up with a severe head injury. A doctor tells Abril that Remo won't survive, but he wakes up in the hospital, puts on some clothes from a woman in the bed next to him, and heads out into the city, wandering around and behaving, in a broad sense, like a woman.

The broadness of this, perhaps, is the movie's undoing. Its narrative eventually reveals or, since the screenplay (co-written by Fabian Casas and Rodolfo Palacios) is so evasive about saying or doing much directly, suggests ideas of identity and control. The first part, obviously, is that Remo begins to identify as Dolores and seems quite comfortable with this new role, despite the brain trauma and without relying on substances. Maybe, that's because this identity isn't new, and sure enough, there's a story going around about a woman who got in some trouble but was rescued by a wealthy "patron" who gave her a second chance. Surely, Rubén fits the bill of that description, and after all, he wants Remo found and returned to him alive, even though one of his goons is eager to kill the jockey who has caused his boss so many problems.

All of this is generally intriguing and occasionally amusing. However, the latter quality of Kill the Jockey, which is defined by Ortega adding some fantastical touches and giving each character here a heavy layer of apathy, ultimately undermines whatever insight might have been gleaned from the material. The eccentric nature of the movie makes any serious or sincere examination of identity a problem or, perhaps worse, turns it into a joke.

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