Reuniting Kevin Costner and Diane Lane — Superman’s folks from Man Of Steel — Let Him Go is Taken way out West. Based on a novel by Larry Watson, writer-director Thomas Bezucha’s film pitches a couple living a quiet life in rural Montana against a violent criminal family in order to retrieve an infant grandson, but it might be the most glacially paced rollercoaster revenge in many years that, despite one stand-out performance and strong craft, devolves into an unengaging, tonally wayward mish-mash of quiet character study and over-the-top thriller.
George Blackledge is an archetypal Kevin Costner character — a retired sheriff leading a quiet life breaking horses with wife Margaret (Diane Lane). Their lives are shattered when their son is killed by an out-of-control horse, leaving behind widowed daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter) and an infant grandson, Jimmy. Flash forward three years, and Lorna is getting remarried, to Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain), a suspect member of a notorious crime clan. After Margaret sees Donnie hitting Lorna, she begins to drive George toward confrontation, but when the Blackledges turn up, Donnie and Lorna have skedaddled with no forwarding address.
It all feels forced and inauthentic.
The Blackledges take off in hot — well, lukewarm — pursuit. The early stretches of the film are painfully slow, spending a lot of time with non-communicative characters who have little in the way of dimensions. Similarly, the detective sequences — looking for Lorna — lack excitement as George and Margaret drift between North Dakota stores searching for clues. (There’s a sub-plot about a Native American boy, played by Booboo Stewart, who seems to serve little narrative purpose but to stand as a surrogate son for the Blackledges.) Things pick up immeasurably when the couple finally catch up with the Weboys, in particular family matriarch Blanche (Lesley Manville). About as far away from Phantom Thread’s Cyril as you can imagine, Manville gives both the character and film an energy desperately required, lending Blanche a compelling threat and unpredictability.
It’s now that Let Him Go jumps into another zone of madness, becoming a Grand Guignol epic as an ageing couple have to take down a houseful of goons in the de rigueur isolated farmhouse to rescue their grandson. It all feels forced and inauthentic, raising an obvious question — why did a small-scale chamber piece feel the need to end in a hail of blood and bullets rather than the more human dramatic resolution for which it obviously cried out?