Ponyboi (2024) Review – A Mob Thriller with a Queer, Genre-Bending Twist

Lily Lady
3 days ago
3 min read

WORDS by LILY LADY

It’s Valentine’s Day in New Jersey. Naturally, a hooker is running from the mob.

If that sounds like the set-up of some predictable genre film -- maybe starring Jeremy Allen White as the mob boss, Ben Affleck as the dead client and Blake Lively as the hooker -- then you definitely haven’t seen Ponyboi.

Instead, we have River Gallo as Ponyboi, the titular hooker in question (and in peril!). Gallo wrote, directed and starred in a 2019 short with the same title -- the first film with an openly intersex actor playing an intersex person. In the 2024 feature, Estaban Arango steps in to direct, and the Ponyboi cinematic universe expands over the course of 103 minutes.

A lot can happen in almost two hours. Guns, glitter, and a briefcase full of cash. A laundromat that’s a front for the mob. Chemsex and a dead client. An arrestingly tender acapella rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire.”

Through it all, Gallo is mesmerizing and magnetic. A tattooed Dylan O’Brian plays the mob guy with levity that never veers into caricature. (At dinner with his pregnant girlfriend: “Baby…why you not eating? Are there not enough croutons in [the salad]? There’s like fucking three in there. It’s Valentine’s Day! You know how much fucking money I spend in this place?!”)