Unsettling drama an engrossing watch
Let Him Go (R16, 114 mins) Directed by Thomas Bezucha Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★
The casting of a film can bring with it quite unearned emotional freight. The last time we saw Diane Lane and Kevin Costner playing a married couple, raising a handsome youngman in rural North America, the film was 2013’s Man of Steel, and their adopted son was Clark Kent, known to you and me as the indestructible Superman.
So when we see Lane and Costner’s son, early in Let Him Go, laying broken-necked and irreversibly dead after an offscreen fall from his horse, it brings with it a creeping, whispering possibility that, whatever story is about to unfurl here, there is no certainty that the good guys will win in the end.
Lane and Costner are Margaret and George Blackledge. The year is 1963 and the place is rural Montana.
Son James was married and the father of an infant son. When his widow Lorna remarries, Margaret and George are at the wedding, happy that their grandson Jimmy will be a part of a new family. But that family are a fearsome clan of criminals and bullies living well outside the law.
Fearing for Jimmy’s safety, the couple drive the hundreds of miles to the Weboys’ homestead in North Dakota, hoping to bring Jimmy and maybe Lorna home with them. Nothing good ensues.
Let Him Go is a savage and, at times, brutal film. Moments buried within the quietness and poignancy of the opening scenes might well telegraph some of the hell that is waiting form argaret and George across the state line, but it was only after the film that I started to think about any of the markers that director Thomas Bezucha ( The Family Stone) had maybe put down.
Before that, I guess I was too busy being entranced by the work that Lane, Costner and cinematographer Guy Godfree do here, making gruff poetry out of Bezucha’s lean script. And then being basically terrified by Lesley Manville, tearing up the screen as Blanche, the monstrous Weboy matriarch.
Let Him Go is mostly terrific. The stunning landscapes, hot spikes of sudden violence and the lyricism of what passes unsaid between the leads, combine into an unsettling and engrossing whole.
In each, the former Raging Bull and Taxi Driver mugs his way through a series of mishaps that satirise Hollywood’s dream factory. He usually suffers a few indignities. Here, it’s being kicked by a horse and being within a blast range. It also doesn’t help that the plot is essentially a combination of The Producers and Get Shorty, with the outcome never likely to stray from a predictable path.
Like the latter, it’s also filled with high-profile and somewhat forgotten stars, but while the original Trail only boasted Crabbe and had Hugh Hefner playing himself, this at least manages to get together a quite impressive ensemble.
While Braff ( Scrubs) is somewhat under-utilised and Freeman doesn’t really have to get out of second gear, Lee Jones reminds us all of what made him such an unlikely comedic star in the Men in Black movies.
He’s really Trail’s sole saving grace, taciturn, but sometimes hilarious relief from De Niro’s character’s endless patter.