Let Him Go

While griev­ing over the loss of their son, retired sher­iff George Black­ledge (Kevin Cost­ner) and his wife Mar­garet (Diane Lane), are per­suad­ed to leave their Mon­tana home and trav­el to the out­skirts of Dako­ta. The aim? To res­cue their young grand­son from a fam­i­ly so off-kil­ter and dodgy that they would give the crime clan from David Michôd’s 2010 film Ani­mal King­dom a run for their money.

With one deceased son and a grand­child that they don’t hold a strong claim to, the cen­tral cou­ple in Thomas Bezucha’s Let Him Go allow feel­ings of grief to sub­side when reflect­ing on these frag­ile famil­ial rela­tions. The film often plays with broad metaphors: dur­ing their long trek to Dako­ta, the cou­ple stop at a police sta­tion the Sher­iff once post­ed. With the dis­used jail cell becom­ing their place of rest, the sym­bol­ism is clear as crystal.

And yet, the film’s unsub­tle nature does not pre­vent the sto­ry­telling itself from being rich and enter­tain­ing. This neo-west­ern tale, while tra­di­tion­al­ly told (and tip­ping its hat to John Ford’s clas­sic The Searchers), still seems to tread a refresh­ing­ly dif­fer­ent path to most mod­ern fea­tures. Ear­ly scenes employ strik­ing visu­al cues to frame sto­ry and estab­lish char­ac­ter. Its sym­bols may be obvi­ous, but it has enough respect for the audi­ence to not spell every­thing out in its dialogue.

It’s a clas­si­cal­ly observed saga which active­ly invests in the lives of its mature pro­tag­o­nists while remind­ing us just how beau­ti­ful a per­former Diane Lane is. Her char­ac­ter has agency with­out resort­ing to fla­grant pan­der­ing. In fact, top marks go to the entire cast. It is doubt­ful that audi­ences will deem Let Him Go as the most notable entry on any of the lead actors’ CVs. But it’s a film which demon­strates that there is a dig­ni­ty and grav­i­ty that comes from age­ing gracefully.