Thoughts on 8 Seconds

   On Tubi I watched 8 Seconds, the 1994 movie starring Luke Perry as the bullrider Lane Frost, who was a rodeo champion in the 80s and died at age 25 when a bull gored him in the ribs in 1989. I thought the movie was OK, remembering it as a flop when it came out, and it was Luke Perry's attempt to be a movie star in a big biopic, crossing over from being a teen TV idol in Beverly Hills: 90210, and I'm sure the title made it easy for critics to make jokes, like saying it lasted 8 seconds in theaters or whatever. After that, Luke Perry mostly had an average career, though by the time he died of a stroke at age 52 in 2019, he had more success on Riverdale as Archie's dad, and I still felt bad for him anyway for dying of a stroke in early middle age. His son Jack Perry is a major wrestler with AEW, wrestling under the name Jungle Boy.

    The movie was fine, I liked Stephen Baldwin's performance more as his fellow bullrider friend Tuff Hedeman, and I had to put on captions to understand characters speaking in Oklahoma accents, as stuff would just fly past me. Cynthia Geary was OK as Lane's wife Kellie, a barrel runner (a horseback rider who races around barrels in rodeos), and I don't know if any of the marital drama in the movie depicted was true or not, or the running theme of Lane trying to please his taciturn dad (James Rebhorn) and never hearing "I love you." I didn't really care, I just watched it as something light, but never felt invested in the sports drama because I don't like bullriding, think it's a dumb sport, and couldn't feel any emotion for Lane winning or losing.

    Renee Zellweger had an early bit role as a groupie who goes after Lane while he's on the road, and I had known she was in the movie, but thought she would be the female lead. I was wrong, and honestly, given how far her career has gone, she could have been more fit as the spunky, funny wife who can still deliver tearful emotional scenes. Geary was OK, but not memorable at all, and even when the movie is having her question herself on putting her dreams aside to support Lane, it didn't feel like she was genuinely torn, more like "other characters tell her how to feel and then she parrots what they say." So I also didn't really care, and think in retrospect that Zellweger would have been way better as the lead than as just some random floozy.

    I know I'm being mean, but I did laugh at how quickly the movie glosses over his death. He gets gored by a bull, his friends rush out to save him, then it jump-cuts to his coffin being carried out of the church, and it was a ridiculous edit, like if people came in not knowing he had died in real life and the movie is like "He died, next scene." And most of the credits are a PowerPoint slideshow presentation of Lane Frost's life, with sappy country ballads playing over it to try to wring out emotion, and I didn't feel anything, not liking the forced manipulation for sadness. Though I did like how his wife in real life had 80s permed hair while the movie wife had straight hair.

    So mostly I thought the movie was just OK, and Perry himself was fine, looking more like the Hollywood version of Frost. The movie isn't very memorable, just middling, but was fine to watch.