Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

Kevin Costner seems to be enjoying a bit of a cinematic renaissance in his old age. This is a guy who made several great movies in the eighties—granted, some have not held up as well as we’d like over time—then made multiple straight-up stinkers in the nineties, and as far as I’m concerned, Let Him Go might be the best film he’s starred in, in nearly thirty years. He’s taken a lot of perfectly respectable supporting roles in recent years, though, playing older father-figure types (or just literal fathers), and while a key element of his role here is also that of father, it’s nice to see him again in a lead role in a movie that’s actually worth recommending.

The other key roles are both women who are reliably consistent in their excellence, the co-lead being Diane Lane, as Costner’s wife. George and Margaret Blackledge are an aging couple whose grown son has died from a horse riding accident, and as they still grieve this loss, their son’s widow, Lorna (Kayli Carter), has remarried into a dangerous family from North Dakota. Without warning, Lorna and her very young son are taken to said family, without a word to the Blackledges on their 1960s ranch in Montana, Margaret decides very quickly they will head out looking for them, and bring the child back. Okay, and Lorna too, fine.

The matriarch of this family, Blanche Weboy, is played by Leslie Manville, and as good as Costner and Lane are, if there is any single reason to watch this movie, it’s Manville. She is in all of maybe three scenes, one of them a climactic extended sequence, but in all cases, she commands the screen, and makes for a formidable villain.

Granted, writer-director Thomas Bezucha (Big Eden, The Family Stone) can’t be bothered to tell us how Blanche gained this kind of power over a large family of grown men in 1960s North Dakota. It seems a slight oversight that this movie casts women in three roles key to the plot and in not one single other part: does Lorna’s brothers-in-law have not one single other wife among them? Seems weird.

But, okay, we’ll let that slide. When George and Margaret finally find themselves at Blanche’s house, ostensibly for dinner, the entire scene is riveting—all because of Leslie Manville’s performance, characterizing a woman with a harrowing sense of being just this side of unhinged. In her later scenes the woman treads dangerously close to caricature, but Manville can always walk a fine line with confidence.

What I like most about Let Him Go, actually, is how the story unfolds. The first half is much more of a quiet drama, Costner and Lane playing a couple working through their grief by steadily and stubbornly working against their own self-interests, searching for a child who, logically, would always be left with the mother he’s already with. But, once we meet Blanche, it becomes clear that Lorna and her little boy need help getting away from this family, who intimidate even local law enforcement.

The second time we see Blanche, things get violent—a bit gruesome, even. There’s a pivotal moment that is, fair warning, kind of hard to stomach. It’s not that difficult to see where things go from there, but to this movie’s credit, you’d never guess that’s where it’s headed by its first half. This is a movie that surprises you, and even if the surprises aren’t exactly pleasant, it makes for great storytelling.

Let Him Go sort of switches genres over time, from “western mystery” to “crime thriller.” It’s always kind of a thrill when a film can pull of such a trick without falling apart. And even with its minor flaws, Let Him Go keeps it together. I’d recommend this movie to anyone.

*These two don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. And neither do we. Which is great!*

Overall: B+