Idris Elba brings a regal urban cowboy to life
BEING A WONDERFUL ACTOR MAY BE MORE OF A BLESSING than being a great actor, and Idris Elba is a wonderful actor. In Concrete Cowboy, Elba plays a resident of North Philadelphia who’s a dedicated horseman, part of a community of riders and horse lovers who have long made use of a stretch of tumbledown stables that, in an increasingly gentrifying world, now lie right in the crosshairs of developers. Elba’s character, a laconic gent named Harp, shares his untidy house with a horse, cordoned off in a makeshift living-room stall.
Why is there a horse in Harp’s living space? Who cares? The presence of this horse, a creamy, speckled beast named Chuck, clues us in to certain qualities of Harp’s character that Elba unfurls for us later: this
