Lean on Pete

If anyone sees an advertisement for Lean On Pete and thinks they're going to see some boy and a horse story like TV's Fury or National Velvet put that out of your mind. This is a touching story about a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest with a single father who gets a summer job working for a horse trainer and it's filled with pathos and tragedy.

Charlie Plummer gives a beautiful performance as the sensitive 15 year old who gets a job with Steve Buscemi a horse trainer who has seen better days. Buscemi is working the quarter horse county fair circuit and he has a couple of horses who also have seen better days.

Buscemi makes it clear from the gitgo that this is a business for him and jockey Chloe Sevigny tries to give him good advice that this is a business and not to get attached to the horses and think of them as pets. But Buscemi's horse named Lean On Pete gets attached to young Plummer and vice versa. He steals the horse to prevent him from a final trip to the glue factory. It's quite the odyssey the boy and horse have.

The vistas of the Pacific Northwest are beautifully captured and the casting is exquisitely perfect in the role. But in a carefully controlled and beautiful performance Charlie Plummer conveys so much emotion. All he wants is a life of some stability and something or someone to love. Simple things a lot of us take for granted and some of us are cursed never to have.

Lean On Pete is a real sleeper of a movie and should have gotten more recognition than it did. I defy anyone to watch this and have a dry eye when finished. Simple and hauntingly beautiful.

Athough the title of the movie gives us something soft and nice, be ready to deal with the cruelty of the real life. It is really a nice story, but for someone more than heavy for his/her expectations. Director Andrew Haigh showed us mainly how looks life of American underclass, what isn't what we can see in some profitable and big budget movies. The young actor, Charlie Plummer, gives us the picture of a good acting and what to say more than that he is the best of all other members in that cast. A natural gift to be a good actor.

This is a film all about isolation and companionship. It is relatively slow in terms of plot pace but I thought it was quite contemplative, a good character based film and so I wasn't entirely bothered by the slowish plot pace. You could almost argue that its like a form of mindfulness in a film, with Charley being fairly quiet and thoughtful. We learn a fair bit about other people who work on the farmland and with the horses.

The sense of wilderness is quite sobering. Also the lack of dialogue at times made it seem quite poignant to me. Overall its an interesting, observation/character based drama which I enjoyed quite a lot.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I'd happily recommend this film, as long as you know its not fast paced or action packed. For what it is, its a very good film.

I would say that this is the most surprising film from Andrew Haigh, simply because it's about subject matter that I did not think he would be all that interested in. Overall, all that doesn't matter because he still creates a very well-rounded story with some fantastic performances at its core. It's simply but beautifully shot, carefully paced, and gently directed. It's a great film, although maybe not to the level of Weekend and 45 Years.

"Lean On Pete" (2017 release from the UK; 121 min.) brings the story of Charley. As the movie opens, 16 yr. old Charley, who lives with his dad in Portland, Oregon, is doing his morning jog, passing Portland Downs. Although Charley doesn't have any prior experience, he is drawn to the wold of horses. By happenstance, Charley gets an opportunity to assist Del, a veteran in the horse racing business. One of the horses Del has is called Lean On Pete. Then one evening, Charley's dad is wounded critically in a fight (we're not sure what the fight is actually about), At this point we are 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out,

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from British writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose previous film was the equally excellent "45 Years". Here, he brings the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin to the big screen. I have not read the book, so I cannot comment to what extent (if any) the movie diverges plot-wise from the original book. As for the movie itself, I need to be quite careful as this is a plot-heavy movie. All I will say is that if you think the movie is mostly about the bond that grows between Charley and the horse, you are quite wrong. Rapidly up-and-coming Charlie Plummer (he played the kidnapped Getty in the recent "All The Money In the World") carries the movie on his young shoulders (he is in virtually every frame of the movie). Steve Buscemi is solid as Del, and Chloe Sevigny has a small role as Del's unsentimental jockey Bonnie.("they're not pets, Charley, they're just race horses"). The movie's wide open photography is eye-candy from start to finish. But in the end, this is all about Charley's story, and simple at that level, "Lean On Pete" is bound to break your heart, as you ache for Charley in his quest for a better future.

"Lean On Pete" premiered at last Fall's Venice Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim (with Plummer winning "Best Young Actor"), and it recently opened at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was not attended well (5 people, including myself), although I'm guessing the 75 degree weather had something to do with that. Or it may be that hopefully this movie will find a wider audience on other platforms beyond the movie theater. Regardless, if you are in the mood for an excellent character study of a young man in search of a better life, I'd readily recommend you seek this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.