Lean on Pete
Filmcoopi Zürich | Release Date: April 6, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
6
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 11, 2018
As the film takes deeper and darker turns, it also becomes something special, something unflinchingly honest, something that will punch you in the gut AND touch your heart. Read full review
100
VoxEmily Todd VanDerWerffApr 11, 2018
A horse might not be able to feel love for a teenage boy, but Lean on Pete makes sure you know how deeply a teenage boy can feel love for a horse. It’s one of the best films of the year. Read full review
100
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlApr 5, 2018
Writer-director Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) dashes expectations in almost every scene. Working from a novel by Willy Vlautin, Haigh has committed himself to making a boy-and-his-horse movie that’s scraped free of everything false or sentimental about the genre. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid Rooney
This is a compassionately observed story told with unimpeachable naturalism and without a grain of sentimentality, propelled by a remarkable performance from Charlie Plummer that's both internalized and emotionally raw. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattApr 13, 2018
Pete is no kind of fairytale; instead, it’s something far sadder and better and more real. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd
Just about every scene in Lean On Pete, the sensitive, unvarnished, at times powerfully sad new drama from writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), reveals something small but important about the hardscrabble lives it chronicles. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 5, 2018
There’s almost a cosmic dimension to some of the most beautiful passages, as if the world (call it nature or God or sensitive direction) were holding Charley in its embrace. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 18, 2018
Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonApr 19, 2018
Lean on Pete is not the sentimental boy-and-his-horse flick that audiences might expect, and it’s certainly not for children. It’s a contemplative art film of subtle beauty. Read full review
88
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonApr 18, 2018
Lean on Pete is life affirming in that it affirms life is hard and unforgiving. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 12, 2018
In the best way, this is a tough movie to shake, and while it believes in the kindness of strangers, Lean on Pete never forgets every other human failing, impulse and circumstance. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 11, 2018
It is hard and empathetic and bleak and often beautiful — not far off from a prairie “400 Blows.” Read full review
88
Paste MagazineTim GriersonApr 5, 2018
The power of writer-director Andrew Haigh’s sublime drama is that it can support myriad interpretations while remaining teasingly mysterious—like its main character, it’s always just a bit out of reach, constantly enticing us to look closer. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoMar 21, 2018
Again and again, I marveled at the humanist depth of the world Haigh creates, one that can only be rendered by a truly great writer and director, working near the top of his game. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 6, 2018
I was afraid at first that I would be watching a sobfest. I needn’t have worried. Nothing very grand is being attempted here, but there’s a core of feeling to what we are witnessing that keeps the sentimentality in check. Read full review
83
Consequence of SoundSarah Kurchak
While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid Ehrlich
Each scene is so quietly compelling because Haigh doesn’t focus on cruelty, but helplessness. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJessica Kiang
It’s saved from all-out depressiveness by Haigh’s compassion, which cradles the characters within their often desperate situations. Read full review
80
EmpireDavid ParkinsonMay 7, 2018
Detached, but never dispassionate, this may not be Andrew Haigh's best film. But its slow-burning authenticity suggests a versatility to go with his acuity for credible characters in recognisable situations. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 12, 2018
At times the film threatens to become relentlessly bleak, but never fully so, thanks in large part to Plummer’s performance. And cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck finds beauty in the most desolate places; even flashing police lights set against nightfall are inviting. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 12, 2018
Mr. Haigh’s previous feature was “45 Years,” a drama of marital distress, starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, in which the strongest feelings went unspoken. The words in his new film are pungent in themselves, but they’re given greater power by Mr. Plummer’s remarkable performance. Read full review
80
SlateJeffrey BloomerApr 12, 2018
Not everyone likes a movie that sneaks up on them, so be advised that Lean on Pete is the ugly-cry event of the spring. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounApr 9, 2018
It’s a road movie in which the origin is more interesting than the finish line, but Lean on Pete is never less than fully felt. Read full review
80
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneyApr 5, 2018
When I think about Haigh’s work, the word tenderness comes to mind. Both Weekend and 45 Years examined the rise and fall of relationships with profound sensitivity. While Lean On Pete isn’t quite as indelible as those two films, it’s another impressive piece of understated storytelling. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranApr 5, 2018
What happens to Charley, the film posits, the bad and the good, is not so much the fault of specific individuals but of the indifferent dead ends built into America's despairing culture of the underclass. Your heart goes out to this striving, yearning young man, and that's a tribute to the fine filmmaking on display. Read full review
80
The GuardianXan Brooks
Lean on Pete is at its potent, stirring best during the opening furlough, when it focuses on this makeshift hobo family as it criss-crosses the Pacific Northwest from one racetrack to the next. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy Ide
There’s a wistful quality to the storytelling which softens some of the sharper edges of tragedy and hardship in this undeniably affecting picture. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie Collin
[Haigh] hasn’t sacrificed a shred of the understated, observational style, lace-like emotional intricacy and lung-filling feel for landscape that all made his previous film, the Norfolk-set marital drama 45 Years, such a force to be reckoned with. Read full review
80
TheWrapAlonso Duralde
The anguish and determination that Plummer can display with just a look or subtle motion is heartbreaking; this is the kind of naturalistic acting that can just kick you in the stomach. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave Calhoun
It's a road movie where the origin feels more interesting than the destination, but it's never less than warm and likeable. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 11, 2018
At the center of this oddly riveting little picaresque is a performance of such quiet power by Plummer — as an antihero both rash and precociously resourceful — that it’s easy to overlook the film’s flaws. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleApr 11, 2018
It’s less Haigh’s mournful view of American society — one that, for sure, rarely finds American movie screens — that makes the heartfelt Lean on Pete stay with you. It’s Plummer’s wounded, achingly alone Charley, humbly striving across a darkening land, holding on desperately. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 5, 2018
Sobs are earned the hard way in this moving drama, which grips you with such scrappy humor and no-bull grit and grace that you'll be hooked. Read full review
75
The AtlanticDavid SimsApr 5, 2018
When it’s at its subtlest, Lean on Pete sings with power; but when things get outwardly grim, it loses a little of its impact. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 24, 2018
Lean on Pete is a somber, quixotic trek through a modern West of limited horizons, finite opportunities and the sense that even the young are just playing out their string. It’s a long, unhurried drama with the odd flash of violence and tragedy. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaApr 5, 2018
There’s a lopsided quality to Lean on Pete that will particularly destabilize viewers (like myself) who are unfamiliar with Vlautin’s book. It has three distinct acts, and the last one feels like a very different movie indeed — its turn of events aren’t implausible, it just feels like they keep going well past the logical finish line. Read full review
67
The Film StageRory O'Connor
Lean on Pete is certainly not a film without qualities (credit to the supporting cast and Magnus Nordenhof Jønck’s cinematography in particular), but viewers might just feel the gnawing sense of a director losing his grip on the reins. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayApr 1, 2018
As sharply as it delineates an America of spotty, informal economies, the film avoids articulating most of the people who live and work in these spaces. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 5, 2018
Haigh, perhaps driven by some misguided sense of narrative purity, refuses to loosen the screws, and it’s almost too much to bear. If you make it through Lean on Pete, you’ll feel weariness in your bones afterward. The ache may not be worth it. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneApr 2, 2018
Buscemi is the least grass-fed of actors, meant for the rat-run of city streets, and, if I didn’t quite believe in him as a country guy, I believed even less in Chloë Sevigny as a cynical jockey with a set of broken bones. But Plummer, who recently played the kidnapped John Paul Getty III, in “All the Money in the World,” grounds and tethers the movie, as an unclaimed soul with barely a dollar to his name. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter Debruge
It’s frustrating to watch, but designed in such a way that the boy’s loneliness will haunt long afterward. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackApr 12, 2018
The effortless richness of character that so thoroughly grounded Haigh’s Oscar-nominated "45 Years" and his critical darling "Weekend" is half-heartedly formed in Pete. There is a disquieting sense that the director has fallen prey to the poetics of space at the expense of the lives within it. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleCarla MeyerApr 12, 2018
Buscemi is characteristically likable here, when Del, mercenary in his treatment of human and beast, should not be so likable. Such is the curse of Buscemi, the delightful killer from “Fargo.” Read full review
40
CineVueJohn Bleasdale
Sadly, the intriguing set up - along with Del and Bonnie - is left behind for a too nakedly state-of-America musing, with everyone Charley happens across having some social ill to portray. Read full review
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