[DARK HORSE is] a film about Abe (Jordan Gelber), a 35-year-old Jewish man—overweight, living with his parents, employed in his father’s real estate business yet still playing with toys, desperate to begin his life and enjoy the culture’s empty cheer.
Abe’s not a frontrunner, the sports metaphor used by his father (Christopher Walken). His dim prospects reflect Everyman pessimism through a lower middle-class experience that’s more authentic than Death of a Salesman, yet rarely acknowledged. Solondz, almost alone among Jewish-American filmmakers, presents ethnic uniqueness frankly, with unsmiling mockery. His tough, deadpan compassion is more humane than fashionable cynicism.
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