Buddy flick that quietly pushes the envelope

The Peanut Butter Falcon

12A cert, 97 min ★★★★★ Dir Tyler Nilson, Mike Schwartz Starring Shia Labeouf, Dakota Johnson, Zack Gottsagen, John Hawkes, Thomas Haden Church, Bruce Dern

Acosy buddy flick meandering along the waterways of North Carolina, The Peanut Butter Falcon isn’t claiming any crusading record for representation, but it quietly pushes the envelope anyway. Zack Gottsagen, in the leading role, has Down’s syndrome, and while there are plenty of actors worldwide with the condition, few have starred in such a sleeper-hit success story.

Directors Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz, essentially giving us a modern retelling of Huckleberry Finn, built their project around Gottsagen’s character, Zak, who slips away at the start from confinement in an assisted living facility – where he’s surrounded by residents four times his age – and stows away on a fishing boat.

It’s not a case of Gottsagen playing himself – in fact, at 34, he’s 12 years older than his character. The directors had to resist financial incentives to recast him with a name actor, though, in a new era where it no longer feels good enough for our Eddie Redmaynes or Dustin Hoffmans to embody disability on screen.

Playing the film’s rough equivalent of Rain Man’s Tom Cruise figure is a compelling Shia Labeouf: he’s Tyler, a down-and-out fisherman, emotionally bruised after his brother’s death, who steals the boat that Zak has smuggled aboard. When they get to shore, he initially wants rid of Zak, but starts to feel responsible for him in the way of these things. And when Zak’s carer Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) catches up with them, a tender familial dynamic takes root.

Labeouf ’s assured performance deepens the film one scene at a time, and the blossoming bromance with the wrestling-obsessed Zak plucks undeniably at the heartstrings. Johnson, too, with her sly timing and understanding of boys being boys, provides regular reality checks without getting in the way of the fun.

When the film looks ahead to Zak’s future, it gets more limited. There’s not much in its sights beyond a vague dream of getting to Florida, but first there’s a raucous staged wrestling match, which the other characters, aiming to make Zak’s dreams come true, conspire to set up.

If anyone could make this pay-off work, it’s Thomas Haden Church, who lends beautifully crusty support as Clint, aka the Salt Water Redneck, a retired champ living out of a trailer, who takes Zak (stage name: the Peanut Butter Falcon) under his wing. Even so, this part of the film has the feel of something cooked up in an indie screenwriting workshop.

While this finale has a punchline that’s wholly (and rightly) of Zak’s making, it takes a step into crowdpleasing fantasy when the film’s strong suit is in fact emotional truth. The Peanut Butter Falcon gets two cheers, nonetheless, for its redemptive warmth and a troupe of actors unfailingly bringing out the best in each other.