Lean on Pete (2017) poster
2017 · drama

Lean on Pete

Directed by Andrew Haigh2h 1m2017
ElsewhereIMDb7.115kRT90%Metacritic80TMDB6.9365
  • heavy
  • measured
  • intense
Movie DNA

Heavy, measured, measured drama, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Charley Thompson, a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete, Charley is horrified to learn he is bound for slaughter, and so he steals the horse, and the duo embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier.

Our read · Lean on Pete (2017) reads as a heavy, measured, grounded drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of Lean on Pete

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want unflinching American hardship drama with a boy and a doomed horse.

ends bittersweetit leaves you shakena slow buildgrips by minute 25attention 4/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upanimal harmgraphic violencechild peril

Skip it tonightSkip if teen homelessness and animal suffering will wreck your evening.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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