Let Him Go: Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are believable vigilante grandparents in beautifully shot, gripping rescue/revenge tale

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

I suppose there’s something about Kevin Costner that demands a background of big sky (often Alberta in disguise), whether to play baseball in a cornfield or play out the tragedy of the takeover of the West from its original inhabitants.

In the gripping Let Him Go, in which he and Diane Lane play vigilante grandparents in the ‘50s trying to rescue their grandchild from unsavoury in-laws, the story moves by car from Montana to North Dakota. That’s a lot of sky, and with it, a feeling of smallness and inevitability of events set against the big picture.

Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are ‘50s ranchers on a mission to kidnap back their grandson in Let Him Go.

In a twist, however, the morally upright Costner is not the straw that stirs this righteous revenge tale. That task belongs to Lane as Margaret Blackledge, whose moral compass leads her to drastic actions not necessarily supported by her more cautious husband George (Costner), a retired lawman.

Adapted by writer/director Thomas Bezucha from the 2013 novel by Larry Watson, Let Him Go tells its set-up story efficiently and quickly. George and Margaret run a Montana ranch. She’s spent her career breaking horses and baking cookies, which is a nice metaphor for the mix of bad-ass and sugar she brings to the story. With them is their son James (Ryan Bruce), their daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter) and the young couple’s infant son.

But when James is killed in a riding accident, Lorna remarries, exchanging vows with Donnie (Will Brittain), a handsome young man with a murky past and, we discover, a violent streak.

Worried enough already, Margaret is aghast to discover one day that the entire young family has moved away in the dead of night to be with his kin in a remote area of North Dakota. That family, the brutal Weboys, are like a rural gang that effectively runs the local town, like characters from the Elmore Leonard-inspired series Justified. They’re headed by a cold-blooded matriarch, played with cackling glee by Lesley Manville. 

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Finding the Weboys turns out to be where the reluctant George shines, playing detective with some soft-skill assist from Margaret. They encounter no small number of shifty people on route, and a couple of allies. Among the latter: an incongruously placed but engaging young Lakota man named Peter (Booboo Stewart), who’s minding his own business after fleeing “Indian school,” but rediscovering his sense of right and wrong.

Let Him Go doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It is a genre thriller, where the good guys face impossible odds against cartoonish bad guys. But it plays out with style, violence that doesn’t strain credulity, and a consequence for every action taken. George and Margaret do not emerge unscathed from their inadvisable rescue mission, but their initial crossed purposes disappear as they begin to operate as a team. 

They are a couple working single-mindedly, a dramatic pas de deux that requires the kind of skill two veterans bring to the party. Costner and Lane (last seen together as Superman’s parents the Kents in Man of Steel) play their parts as if they’ve played them before, and have a smooth and believable give-and-take, as tense, nail-biting events unfold.

Let Him Go. Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha. Starring Diane Lane, Kevin Costner and Lesley Manville. Debuts in theatres (where open), Friday, November 6.