![]() “Let Him Go” starts as a detective story, but it doesn’t take long for Margaret and George to find their way to the Weboy compound, at which point the movie becomes a rural Western gothic thriller. As they drop into small towns and ask around, they keep hearing stories about Donnie’s family clan, the Weboys (pronounced wee-boys), who from the sound of it are some sort of strongarm cowboy dynasty from hell. As George points out, she has no legal justification for trying to wrench a boy away from his mother, but she’s being driven by instinct George goes along to protect her. Tellingly, it’s Margaret, still haunted by the loss of her own son, who jump-starts the rescue odyssey. Margaret and George, aghast at the fate that now looms over their grandson, climb into their ancient Chevy station wagon (it looks like it’s from the ’40s) and embark on a road voyage to get him back. Donnie has taken them to move in with his family somewhere in North Dakota. As if the abuse weren’t disturbing enough, days later, without so much as a goodbye, they’re gone. On a trip into town, Margaret, who spies them from her car window, observes Donnie giving little Jimmy a slap for the crime of having dropped his ice cream he then gives Lorna a harder slap. All is well until James dies in a freak accident (he’s thrown from his horse).Ĭut to three years later, when the widowed Lorna marries the polite, wholesome-looking Donnie (Will Brittain), who is not what he seems. ![]() They have a nice quiet life on their ranch in Montana, living with their son, James (Ryan Bruce), his wife, Lorna (Kayli Carter), and the couple’s infant son, Jimmy. She’s a tough but tender farm wife who used to break horses and now dribbles sugar icing on homemade cakes that look good enough to be on a Sara Lee box. He’s a retired lawman, with a badge and pistol in his drawer that look like they came out of an old Western (Costner always looks like he came out of an old Western - and that’s a compliment). Lane and Costner play Margaret and George Blackledge. They turn the movie into an unlikely thing: a touchingly bone-weary romance steeped in vengeance.Īt first, we think we’re watching a sensitive weeper-of-the-week about grief, loss, and time’s healing passage. And Lane and Costner give it their all in a casual way that only pros this seasoned and gifted can. “Let Him Go” isn’t subtle, but as a genre film it’s original and shrewdly made, with a floridly gripping suspense. If that sounds like an oddball of a movie, but one that’s going to keep you watching, it is. “ Let Him Go,” starring Diane Lane and Kevin Costner as an aging rancher couple out to rescue their grandson from a clan of varmint in-laws, is set in Big Sky Country about 50 years ago, and it’s like a family-values, homespun-nostalgia version of “The Searchers” crossed with “Midsommar” on the range.
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