Let Him Go (2020) We know we might run the risk of overpraising this film since it was such a wonderful breath of fresh air after enduring the endless gobbledegook of "Tenet".....(see yesterday's post...)
Don't care. We effin' loved this movie and we don't care how many critics who get way more web traffic than we do think otherwise.
As far as we're concerned, this goes on BQ's list of favorite movies released last year.
We think we know why we took to "Let Him Go" so much.
To us, it looks and sounds like a movie from the early to mid 1970's, which is now considered as a golden decade for American cinema.......a time when the exciting, gifted new generation of young filmmakers began to make their reputations.....Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsece, George Lucas, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Terence Malick, Steven Spielberg.
These filmmakers made movies because they loved movies.......and they loved using the medium to tell great stories. The collapsing movie studios didn't know what audiences wanted so these blazing talents received free reign.
True, sometimes they fell on their faces. But they delivered some brilliant, iconic movies, now thought of today as classics.
"Let Him Go" has that kind of free spirited tone that isn't afraid to mix different genres to spin a compelling tale. Unlike most films released today, it's doesn't smell like a marketing project.
Beginning as a somber drama, it sucks you in as it inexorably turns into a harrowing thriller with a gut-wrenching climax fit for a Greek tragedy.
With spare dialogue, it's a story that depends as much on the silences as much as the speeches. And the cast here pulls it off with performances that range from the subtly heartbreaking to the spectacularly scary.
Kevin Costner and Diane Lane play characters not far removed the 'Ma and Pa Kent' characters they played in "Man Of Steel." They're retired Montana horse ranchers, living with their only son, daughter-in-law and their newly born infant grandson.
After their son dies an accidental death, several years later their daughter-in-law remarries.......to an abusive creep who's part of a large clan of equally violent, sinister creeps.
When the abuser wisks away his wife and five year old stepson to his family home in North Dakota, Costner and Lane embark on a dangerous quest to rescue their grandson and his cowed, terrified mother.
This is exactly where we'll stop explaining anything else......except to be on the lookout for British actress Lesley Manville as the malignant matriarch of that horrible clan. She's our top candidate for best supporting actress of 2020. She'll scare the living crap out of you.
Like the great 1970's movies we remember, this film isn't afraid to take time to tell its story.....carefully, sometimes silently and always with perfectly thought out cinematography and production design.
It was obviously made by people who love movies.
And that's why BQ gives it an unconditional 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
We say see it ASAP. Don't let "Let Him Go" go anywhere but on the top of your "must see" list.
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