Synopsis
Charley Thompson, a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete, Charley is horrified to learn he is bound for slaughter, and so he steals the horse, and the duo embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier.
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Cast
- Charlie PlummerCharley
- Chloë SevignyBonnie
- Steve ZahnSilver
- Justin RainMike
- Lewis PullmanDallas
- Bob OlinMr. Kendall
- Alison ElliottAunt Margy
- Rachael Perrell FosketMartha
- Kurt ConroydNurse
- Travis FimmelRay
- 100
The Hollywood Reporter
This is a compassionately observed story told with unimpeachable naturalism and without a grain of sentimentality, propelled by a remarkable performance from Charlie Plummer that's both internalized and emotionally raw. - 91
The A.V. Club
Just about every scene in Lean On Pete, the sensitive, unvarnished, at times powerfully sad new drama from writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), reveals something small but important about the hardscrabble lives it chronicles. - 83
Consequence
While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect. - 83
IndieWire
Each scene is so quietly compelling because Haigh doesn’t focus on cruelty, but helplessness. - 83
The Playlist
It’s saved from all-out depressiveness by Haigh’s compassion, which cradles the characters within their often desperate situations. - 80
The Guardian
Lean on Pete is at its potent, stirring best during the opening furlough, when it focuses on this makeshift hobo family as it criss-crosses the Pacific Northwest from one racetrack to the next. - 80
Screen Daily
There’s a wistful quality to the storytelling which softens some of the sharper edges of tragedy and hardship in this undeniably affecting picture. - 80
The Telegraph
[Haigh] hasn’t sacrificed a shred of the understated, observational style, lace-like emotional intricacy and lung-filling feel for landscape that all made his previous film, the Norfolk-set marital drama 45 Years, such a force to be reckoned with.