‘Let Him Go’ Review: Kevin Costner and Diane Lane Carry a Throwback Western

If Zack Snyder’s superhero movies got one thing right — and that’s a big “if” — it’s that Kevin Costner and Diane Lane are the Platonic ideal of white, decent, midwestern parents. Bright actors on their own, these two stars transform into some kind of denim supernova whenever they’re hired to share the same galaxy; the patriotic energy of their combined screen presence is powerful enough to fuel a Ford commercial and make you want to call your parents “ma” and “pa” for a few weird days. But while Snyder recognized that Costner and Lane spark an old-fashioned vision of American values more potent than even Superman could express alone, the franchise-oriented “Man of Steel” couldn’t afford to consider that such a vision can only exist in hindsight.
Thomas Bezucha’s “Let Him Go” doesn’t have that problem. Adapted from the Larry Watson novel of the same name, this terse and simple Western thriller casts Costner and Lane as a retired couple in early ’60s Montana whose marriage is tested at a time when America’s aspirational self-image is about to be undone by the tribalism of its design. Here is a tanned hide of a movie about the violence that results from conflicting ideas of what this country should be, and while the writer/director of “The Family Stone” lacks the chops to tell this story with the suspense it demands (or the hard-nosed focus required to mine something new from the myth it deconstructs), he fully understands the symbolic power of seeing these actors lose something they can never get back.
Unfolding like a cross between “The Searchers” and a bloody episode of “This Is Us,” “Let Him Go” introduces three generations of the Blackledge family living together in relative harmony before it tears them apart just a few minutes later. Things aren’t perfect between Margaret (Lane) and her daughter-in-law Lorna (“Private Life” breakout Kayli Carter) — an early moment of maternal disagreement anticipates the mess of “mother knows best” tension to come — and we wonder how emotionally accessible a stone-faced sheriff like George (Costner, in subdued “Yellowstone” mode) could’ve been to his son Ryan, but the whole clan is united by their love for baby Jimmy.