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.