An American odyssey

It’s true that Lean on Pete is about a boy and a horse. But that capsule summary, however accurate, barely scratches the surface of this modest but remarkably wide-ranging film.

The boy is Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer), a quietly plucky 15-year-old who lives an itinerant poverty-level life with his roustabout father, Ray. The horse is a worn-out race horse named Lean on Pete, and Charley begins to take an interest in him while working for a grouchy old trainer (Steve Buscemi) at a Portland, Ore., race track.

A series of increasingly dramatic episodes involving the horse are central to the story as a whole, but Lean on Pete (adapted from a novel by Willy Vlautin) is above all about Charley coming of age amid the neglect and disorder of a life begun in the tattered margins of contemporary society.

As a “horse story” and as social commentary, the film is both bracingly unsentimental and unexpectedly lyrical. The emergence of small graces within some very rough circumstances is chief among the film’s quiet brilliances.

Writer-director Andrew Haigh gets low-key, gently complex performances out of his cast, with the result that much of the film has a near-documentary quality, even in scenes involving the better-known names in the cast. And the rough-edged gallery of characters that perks up over the course of the action becomes another of the film’s strong points.

Plummer’s performance as Charley is the true centerpiece in the film’s understated blend of realism and dramatic emotion. Travis Fimmel’s performance as Ray Thompson, Charley’s youthfully erratic father, is a little miracle blend of rowdily fraternal affection and genially arrested development.

Del Montgomery (Buscemi), the curmudgeonly trainer, is mostly a sleazy jerk, but still given to glints of redeeming impulses. A homeless alcoholic named Silver (Steve Zahn) is a convivial sort with a nasty mean streak. A jockey named Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny) is cynical about Del and the local racing scene, but still shows a tentative protectiveness toward Charley.