Review: Let Him Go Is a Hammy Melodrama That’s Parched for Backstory

Following the death of their son after he’s thrown from his horse—in a scene that Thomas Bezucha’s Let Him Go repeatedly flashes back to, and to diminishing returns—Margaret and George Blackledge (Diane Lane and Kevin Costner) plan to devote themselves fully to their grandson. But after Jimmy and his mother, Lorna (Kayli Carter), are spirited away from their Montana town by her abusive new husband, Donnie (Will Brittain), the Blackledges bake a cake for the road, load a pistol just in case, and take off to track them down. Unfortunately for them, Jimmy’s stepfather is one of the Weboys, a family of sadistic North Dakotan brothers under the thumb of their mad matriarch, Blanche (Lesley Manville).

Adapted from Larry Watson’s 2013 novel, Let Him Go relishes the sudden tonal shift that accompanies the Blackledges’ arrival on the Weboy ranch. The early scenes center the brittle, broken Margaret, whose bubbly adoration for her grandson hardens into monomanical steel when she stands to lose him. (The gruffly charming Costner usually recedes into the background in the role of a skeptical but steadfast wingman.) The slow, silent shots of George watching Margaret stare out a window and the sweeping pans across the mountain landscapes that decorate the couple’s journey offer a fragile idyllic vision of the peace the pair is fighting for. Bezucha aims for an energizing jolt when this ruggedly gentle pair reach their destination, but the heated, hammy urgency that propels the plot forward once they find Johnny and the creepy clan who won’t give him up only serves to dilute the sincerity of their mission.

Watson’s novel distinguished itself, grammatically at least, with the absence of quotation marks: No matter who’s speaking, the dialogue bleeds into the rest of the text, fogging the distinctions between character and narrator. No such haziness exists in Bezucha’s stolid screenplay, which is closely drawn, often verbatim, from Watson’s scenes. Ambiguous lines on the page, which may or may not have intended to be spoken aloud in the novel, land lumpily in the film’s unimaginative transposition of the story. And though Lane’s performance is dauntless and vital enough to animate the more solitary moments in the film, the verbal confrontations between the Blackledges and the Weboys often tiptoe toward ridiculousness in their shapeless hostility. Let Him Go is chockfull of characters telling each other to get to the point, but that directness comes at the cost of getting to know most of the characters, the battered Lorna included, outside of these melodramatic showdowns.

The Weboys aren’t people so much as armed obstacles to the Blackledges’ family reunion: Except for the pungent Blanche and lewd Uncle Bill, played with over-the-top menace by Jeffrey Donovan, the rest of the gang blends together as nondescript thugs. Just the name of this monstrous Midwestern family sets officers a-trembling all the way on the far side of the Montana border, but there’s no explanation for why or how they got so scary—and, frankly, minimal evidence that they’ve bothered anybody recently besides the obstinate Margaret and George. When the caustic clashes turn physical, there’s neither the raw, motiveless malignity of a horror film nor the escalation of a conflict of personalities expected from a psychological thriller. These climaxes are grisly—and, eventually, borderline apocalyptic—but also damningly disconnected from the emotional thrust of the Blackledges’ quest to heal their clan.

The Blackledges’ demand that the Weboys let Johnny go mirrors their own struggle to move on from their son’s death. But the acceleration toward the cataclysmic finale abandons any such traces of metaphorical nuance. A Native American drifter (Booboo Stewart) who befriends them and briefly recounts his traumatizing experience at a culture-crushing boarding school offers a wistful glimpse at the kind of character-driven storyline that the film deserts halfway down the road. After one particularly gruesome interlude, Blanche parts from the Blackledges with a snarling, “Maybe you understand my family now.” We sure don’t, but perhaps that backstory would feature the fiery intelligibility that this damp melodrama never achieves.