![]() ![]() This tonal change perks up the storyline, which has grown somewhat staid during the Blackledges’ search. ![]() Grotesque violence and gothic horror occur during this section of the film. Her deranged and absolute control of her grown boys calls to mind characters like Shelley Winters’ unhinged Ma Barker in Bloody Mama or off-the-chain Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom. The Blackledges are in over their heads once they finally meet up with the Weboys, an isolated family of peculiar men and their crazy and domineering mother, Blanche (Manville), who can make a pork-chop dinner sound threatening. Costner demonstrates, as he did in The Upside of Anger, what a stolid but complementary presence he can be for assertive female characters. Lane, as usual, is brilliant as the determined but tight-lipped Blackledge matriarch. Margaret and George, a retired sheriff, take off in pursuit, and whomever they ask about the whereabouts of the Weboy clan (pronounced wee-boy), evinces a shudder of nervousness and trepidation that’s as off-putting as the sound of the odd surname. Presumably, Bill has taken Lorna and Jimmy back to his family in North Dakota. A few days later, they’ve vanished without a word. While in town not long afterward, Margaret observes through her car windshield Bill slapping her now-3-year-old grandson and his mother. The film transitions, however, to three years later at the remarriage of their daughter-in-law Lorna (Carter) to Bill Weboy (Donovan). In the next scene, we see Margaret somberly tying the knot in George’s necktie, and we assume they are getting dressed for their son’s funeral. Early on, James dies in a freak horse-riding accident. In addition to Margaret and George, the couple’s son James and his wife live there with their newborn son Jimmy. Three generations live on the Blackledges’ Montana ranch. Let Him Go is based on Larry Watson’s novel of the same title. It’s this change in tone that distinguishes the film yet is also its downfall. By the second half of the film, this Western thriller turns Southern Gothic. Set in Montana and North Dakota sometime during the mid-20th century, Let Him Go nevertheless throws a whole lot of crazy in the Blackledges’ direction. Cast as long-married couple Margaret and George Blackledge, Lane and Costner embody similar attributes as Superman’s Earthly protectors: faith, courage, and white-bread American values. No superheroes come flying to the rescue in Let Him Go, however. That’s because writer/director Thomas Bezucha ( The Family Stone, Monte Carlo) has cast as his film’s protagonists the same actors, Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, who played the Man of Steel’s terrestrial parents in Zack Snyder’s recent screen versions of the tale. You’d be forgiven if you half-expected Superman to fly in to save the day in the Western thriller Let Him Go. ![]()
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