Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) is 15 and lives with his single father Ray (Travis Fimmel), and soon finds casual work caring for a retired racehorse named Lean on Pete, whose owner Del (Steve Buscemi) is a hot-tempered man who nonetheless sees something in Charley and takes him under his wing. When Ray is then attacked and hospitalised with life-threatening wounds, Charley insists on staying at his side but Ray implores him to instead focus on his work with Pete and Del. Then, after Ray dies and Charley learns Pete is to be taken to Mexico to be slaughtered, he clandestinely steals Pete at night and takes him to Wyoming in Del's truck to live with Charley's Aunt Margy, the only mother figure he has ever known.
I'm sorry, but between his 2015 effort 45 Years and this, could writer-director Andrew Haigh be any duller as a filmmaker? I'm starting to feel like his movies should come with a defibrillator for the viewer to jolt them into vivaciousness with. His style is not slow; it is utterly glacial and maybe even worse than that. A movie being slow-paced is fine, provided (IMO) it still have some semblance of variety and suspense, but so far I'm sensing none of either of those qualities in Haigh's work. However, in fairness, I managed to sit through all of Lean on Pete; 45 Years alienated me after 30 minutes.
It's an adaptation of a novel by Willy Vlautin and maybe my frustrations with the languid plot are largely his responsibility instead of Haigh's, but I still think Haigh should've brought a bit more energy and, again, suspense, to how that narrative was told. Plummer makes an adequately relatable protagonist in an understated turn and Magnus Joenck's photography is lucid and precise, but those were the only pros I noticed here and James Edward Barker contributes an awfully uninspired and flat score. Overall, I wouldn't recommend you Lean on Pete because the story he's in, and how Haigh tells it, could make you nod off. 5/10.
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