X
- 2018
- R
- A24
- 2 h 1 m
- 2018
- R
- A24
- 2 h 1 m
Summary Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) arrives in Portland, Oregon with his single father Ray (Travis Fimmel), both of them eager for a fresh start after a series of hard knocks. While Ray descends into personal turmoil, Charley finds acceptance and camaraderie at a local racetrack where he lands a job caring for an aging Qu...
Directed By: Andrew Haigh
Written By: Willy Vlautin, Andrew Haigh
- 2018
- R
- A24
- 2 h 1 m
- 2018
- R
- A24
- 2 h 1 m
Lean on Pete
80
7.7
Where to Watch
Summary Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) arrives in Portland, Oregon with his single father Ray (Travis Fimmel), both of them eager for a fresh start after a series of hard knocks. While Ray descends into personal turmoil, Charley finds acceptance and camaraderie at a local racetrack where he lands a job caring for an aging Qu...
Directed By: Andrew Haigh
Written By: Willy Vlautin, Andrew Haigh
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
80
86% Positive
38 Reviews
38 Reviews
14% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 44 Critic Reviews
80
86% Positive
38 Reviews
38 Reviews
14% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
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.
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.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 56 User Ratings
7.7
86% Positive
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
13% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
2% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 56 User Ratings
7.7
86% Positive
48 Ratings
48 Ratings
13% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
2% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
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.
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Really beautiful and profound drama film that tells the tragic and very difficult story of a little boy who is too young to experience the terrible things that happen to him. The film is very dramatic and in many points it is very moving but there are some very small problems such as the fact that it is far too unbelievable that all the people this boy meets are all angels who treat him very well and it seems that they would do anything for him, but apart from this really small flaw, everything else is very nice and very well done. The whole film is perfectly structured and very entertaining indeed.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just a wonderful movie! As many reviewers have noted, a bravura performance by Charlie Plummer, and really the whole cast is superb. Steve Buscemi is always great, Chloe Sevigny is completely believable as a shady jockey, and it's great to see Alison Elliott again in a most moving role. I can't believe it's been 20 years since I saw her wonderful performance in "Spitfire Grill". I surely am getting old.
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Decent enough, but not a patch on Haigh's previous work
15-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) lives with his father, Ray (Travis Fimmel), who is drinking himself into an early grave. Finding work caring for an ageing race horse named Lean on Pete, Charley is devastated when he learns that Pete's owner, Del Montgomery (Steve Buscemi), is planning to slaughter the animal. Determined to save his friend, Charley steals Pete, and the two set out on an odyssey across the modern American frontier.
Fans of writer/director Andrew Haigh will know his unassailable talent for what one might label unsentimental emotionalism; his films deal with intensely emotional situations without lapsing into Speilbergian fawnishness. And, although compared to the excellent Weekend (2011), and the masterful 45 Years (2015), Lean on Pete is a touch melodramatic, Haigh's talent for allowing character and theme to rise organically to the surface through quiet moments of introspection is still very much to the fore. So why not a higher score? Adapted from Willy Vlautin's 2010 novel of the same name, the biggest problem with the film is that things are laid on too thick; Charley is very much a Job figure, and suffers such a litany of misfortunes that one fully expects him to be diagnosed with terminal cancer. Similarly, the pseudo-allegorical nature of the characters he encounters is too on-the-nose for the realistic milieu Haigh has crafted. Part state-of-the-nation address, part bildungsroman, it's worth a look, but is ultimately lacking a satisfying thematic through-line.
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Production Company
Film4,
British Film Institute (BFI),
The Bureau
Release Date Apr 6, 2018
Duration 2 h 1 m
Rating R
Tagline You Can't Get Anywhere On Your Own
Awards
Les Arcs European Film Festival
• 4 Wins & 4 Nominations
British Independent Film Awards
• 4 Nominations
Luxembourg City Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
