The Movie: Let Him Go
The Director: Thomas Bezucha
The Cast: Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Lesley Manville, Jeffrey Donovan, Kayli Carter, Booboo Stewart, Will Brittain
The Story: A retired sheriff and his wife, grieving over the death of their son, set out to find their only grandson.
The Review:
This is one of those dark, midwestern Americana stories that I guess is supposed to show the strength and resolve of the heartland and it's people or something or other and I actually don't even know what all that means. What this movie shows is that there are bullies in the world who believe they can get away with anything and that mentality is a lot of what goes into how certain undesirable aspects of midwestern culture came to be. One of the most glaring examples is how racism and classism was embedded into our justice system. It's not blatant, but it's definitely there.
Kevin Costner and Diane Lane have each had marvelous careers playing all sorts of different characters in all sorts of different movies. I've always loved seeing their work and seeing them together was really the saving grace of a movie that was otherwise dull, predictable, and felt much longer than it's nearly two hour run time. I'm really not sure what this movie was trying to accomplish other than reinforcing the idea that there are bad people and those bad people will do bad things so don't mess with them.
Oh, and there was a bit more social commentary that was more intentionally wedged into the story by adding an indigenous character and having him monologue about how bad his family was treated and how his language and culture was white washed out of him when he was a young boy. I think that was really only added in because someone felt it would benefit a spreadsheet of some sort because the character was so random, had no meaning to the story, and had no real depth. The character wasn't necessary at all which is really how I feel about this whole movie.
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