Lean on Pete

First Hit: A wonderfully acted film about a young boy having to raise himself. 

The sixteen-year-old Charley (Charlie Plummer) is a great kid. He takes care of himself and his father Ray (Travis Fimmel) who, although capable of working, is shown to imbibe in drinking and likes messing with women, married women as well.

What Charley depends on is that his father is there. His father also teaches him a view of life, which is homespun philosophy. There is one bit when he explains why waitresses are the best women in the world, that's true to his view of the world.

Charley's mother left him because she was great one moment and horrible and mean the next. During a drunken fight with his father, she left for good. His father paints his mother as bipolar.

Charley has not heard from is mother in nearly 8 years and he longs for her and finds solace and friendship with Del (Steve Buscemi) a horse trainer and one of his horses Lean on Pete. Del is in the downside of his career but he pays Charley well for doing work like walking Pete and cleaning out the stables.

Del's friend and part-time jockey Bonnie (Chloe Sevigny) also befriends Charley.

When Charley's dad dies because of a wound he receives from an irate husband, he becomes focused on finding his mother.

This story evolves more and Charley is put through some very difficult situations with Del, Bonnie, and Pete. But his focus is clear, he loved his dad, he wants to find his mother and he loves Lean on Pete.

The scenes of Charley and Del are wonderful. Del being crusty and set in his ways get softened a bit with Charley. Scenes of Ray and Charley were also both sweet and poignant. The pictures of the open land when Charley was walking to Wyoming were devine.

Plummer was fantastic. He's a great young actor and embodied the fear of his life falling apart and his will to survive in an amazing way.  Fimmel was strong as the father who took on the responsibility of raising his son alone and who wanted the freedom to live a single life. Buscemi was outstanding as the crusty difficult soft-hearted horse trainer. The scene where he tells Charley to get some eating manners was priceless. Sevigny was strong as the jockey who tried to teach Charley that horses cannot be pets. Steve Zahn does a nice turn as the homeless Silver. Andrew Haigh both wrote and directed this film with a fine hand at creating characters that made this film work.

Overall: There were heartbreaking scenes in this film that made me really pause and think about the multitude of ways people are raised.

Management

First Hit: This film never felt like it left the ground and soared, yet in ways it depicted being grounded and giving the illusion of learning how to soar.

Jennifer Aniston is one of those beautiful women who are also good at looking plain. In this film she plays Sue, a successful saleswoman who sells motel room art.

On her journey she stays at a family owned motel in Kingman, Arizona where she meets Mike the lovelorn and lost son of the motel owners. Mike is played by Steve Zahn. We watch Mike give Sue the high and low look when she is at the front desk checking into the motel. Mike sees her beauty and also thinks, probably because her plain and forlorn air, he might have a chance at meeting her.

His plot is to take up an old stale bottle of wine to her room and position it as the “standard complimentary welcome” gift. He does this and gets basically a cold shoulder. Not a great scene but the story starts here because it reveals a real life sense of each the characters. You see Sue working on her computer but she is playing solitaire, you sense the awkwardness of their interaction, you see the loneliness in their looks and the stilted dialog. When she lets him touch her butt it is both funny and deeply revealing moment for both, her disconnection from the act and his amazement that he’s touching her butt.

Then there is one section of dialog when Mike asks Sue if she wants kids. These resulting scenes move the film forward; Sue looking for herself and Mike hoping he’s part of Sue’s life.

Aniston gives a strong performance as a road warrior looking for a place to land while keeping herself so busy she ignores that her life is passing her by. However, she gets traction on her life and Aniston makes good on her promise of intelligent beauty. Zahn didn’t impress me at the beginning of the film; I didn’t see the diamond in the rough, and this is how it was suppose to be. It worked, and as Zahn makes his transformation through the film I actually started to believe he would be a good match for Aniston.

Overall: As a “small” film (as my friend called it), it stood out as something enjoyable to watch and it does give pause and cause towards thought days after seeing it.