Let Him Go - 2020 film review

Let Him Go is an uneven but very watchable film starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as grandparents desperate to restore contact with their grandson. This has the makings of a weepie or perhaps a socially conscious drama but the film, based on a novel by Larry Watson, is rather more ambitious. There are some langourous moments but there's plenty of action in the later stages, some of it quite shocking.

At first, the Blackledges seem to lead an idyllic life. George (a low-key but impressive Costner) is a retired sheriff, happily married to the forceful Margaret (Lane). Their son James is married to Lorna (Kayli Carter) and they have a small child, Jimmy. But then James dies in a tragic riding accident. Lorna remarries but her new husband Donnie Weboys is cut from different cloth and it's soon apparent that he's violent towards both his wife and step-son.

One day, Lorna and her new family vanish. Margaret is determined to get her grandson back. At this point, you might wonder whether her behaviour and sense of entitlement is over the top. Grandparents' rights tend to be under-valued by society, but George's anxiety about her plans is understandable - and it's reinforced when he discovers that she has brought a gun with her....

To say to much about what follows would be unfair. Suffice to say that Lesley Manville gives a truly memorable, if perhaps over-the-top, performance as a matriarch you really don't want to mess with. There are flaws in this film, but the quality of the acting is a major asset, as is the evocative rural camera work.     

Every Secret Thing - 2015 film review

Laura Lippman is a crime writer of the highest calibre, and so I watched the recent film version of Every Secret Thing, based on her book of the same name, with great interest. I expected a strong story, and I wasn't disappointed. There aren't many major characters, but a clever storyline springs a series of surprises that help to reveal crucial elements of the protagonists' personalities.

The present day story links in with a crime in the past - the abduction and killing of a baby by two young girls. Those girls, Ronnie and Alice, are convicted, and eventually released, and the focus is on how their past actions continue to affect their lives, and the lives of those around them. There's a similarity here with the concept of Alex Marwood's enjoyable novel Wicked Girls, but the two stories are very different, though equally compelling.

When a young girl goes missing in the neighbourhood where both Ronnie and Alice are based, the police are immediately suspicious. Elizabeth Banks is very good as the cop with a personal stake in the case, while Diane Lane gives a subtle performance as Alice's mother. At first we regard her as loving and kind, but the complexity of her attitudes towards the two girls become increasingly apparent.

As Ronnie and Alice, Dakota Fanning and (especially) Diane Macdonald are very well cast. Ronnie's background is apparently less privileged than Alice's, but in reality, both of them are damaged people. I've seen some fairly negative reviews of this film, but as the truth is gradually revealed, I found myself increasingly impressed. It is a relatively short film, and its psychological intensity makes it, in my opinion, both watchable and thought-provoking.

Adrian Lyne

After watching the Richard Gere movie Unfaithful the other day, I looked up details of the director Adrian Lyne. His name rang a bell, and I soon realised why – his CV includes a number of highly successful movies, including the ultra-memorable Fatal Attraction.

It turns out that his other achievements include Flashdance, and directing the music video of a song from the soundtrack, ‘Maniac’, which I’ve always liked (it’s performed in suitably manic style by Michael Sembello in the film.)

Unfaithful is a good film, which has earned much critical acclaim. And although I called it a ‘Richard Gere movie’, in truth the show belongs to Diane Lane, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance as Gere’s wife. Lane also starred in Untraceable, which I covered on this blog a while back. She is a fine performer, and also very lovely.

Lovely enough, in the film, to be seduced by a glamorous Frenchman. Their torrid affair is conducted so carelessly that it’s no surprise when Gere gets to hear rumours of it. He hires a private detective to follow Lane, and a series of calamities ensue. The film does, at times, move excruciatingly slowly, but it’s very well-made. Lyne is a genuinely accomplished director.

Untraceable

One of the movies I most enjoyed in 2008 was Fracture, a splendidly clever new take on the ‘impossible crime’ concept, directed by Gregory Hoblit, so I jumped at the chance to see his latest, Untraceable. Again, it’s a movie with merit – the production values are high, and the action moves at a rapid pace - but overall, it is not in the same league as Fracture.

One reason is the casting. Anthony Hopkins was brilliant in Fracture. The actors in Untraceable are more than competent – notably Diane Lane, as a lone mother FBI agent – but somehow seem to lack true star quality. More important, though, is the fact that although there are some intelligent aspects to the film, ultimately it has a slightly exploitative, and at the same time predictable, feel.

In essence,.the idea is that a serial killer based in Portland, USA, is murdering people in slow and agonising ways and streaming their torture on to an internet site. The more people who view, the quicker the victim dies. There is some interesting stuff here, around the voyeuristic nature of the viewers, and their often unpleasant (but, unfortunately, not implausible) comments on what they are seeing. The trouble is that balancing this against a clock-race thriller, the film’s audience is in danger of joining up with the voyeurs. Making an internet-related movie work isn’t that easy, although this is an improvement on some efforts I’ve seen. But although it has gripping moments, it does not avoid the trap of cliché.

A BBC film critic put it well, when she said that Untraceable, ‘feels as if it’s been patched together using “auto-fill screenwriting software’. And there are plot holes. Why did Lane put herself in a situation where she was vulnerable to the psycho-killer? How did the bad guy organise the set-up for his final crime? I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I’m not convinced Mr Hoblit did, either.