The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

This is a compassionately observed story told with unimpeachable naturalism and without a grain of sentimentality, propelled by a remarkable performance from Charlie Plummer that's both internalized and emotionally raw.

Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper

As the film takes deeper and darker turns, it also becomes something special, something unflinchingly honest, something that will punch you in the gut AND touch your heart.

Vox by Emily VanDerWerff

A horse might not be able to feel love for a teenage boy, but Lean on Pete makes sure you know how deeply a teenage boy can feel love for a horse. It’s one of the best films of the year.

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Writer-director Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) dashes expectations in almost every scene. Working from a novel by Willy Vlautin, Haigh has committed himself to making a boy-and-his-horse movie that’s scraped free of everything false or sentimental about the genre.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

Just about every scene in Lean On Pete, the sensitive, unvarnished, at times powerfully sad new drama from writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), reveals something small but important about the hardscrabble lives it chronicles.

Entertainment Weekly by Leah Greenblatt

Pete is no kind of fairytale; instead, it’s something far sadder and better and more real.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

There’s almost a cosmic dimension to some of the most beautiful passages, as if the world (call it nature or God or sensitive direction) were holding Charley in its embrace.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

Paste Magazine by Tim Grierson

The power of writer-director Andrew Haigh’s sublime drama is that it can support myriad interpretations while remaining teasingly mysterious—like its main character, it’s always just a bit out of reach, constantly enticing us to look closer.

RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico

Again and again, I marveled at the humanist depth of the world Haigh creates, one that can only be rendered by a truly great writer and director, working near the top of his game.

Consequence by Sarah Kurchak

While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

It’s saved from all-out depressiveness by Haigh’s compassion, which cradles the characters within their often desperate situations.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

Each scene is so quietly compelling because Haigh doesn’t focus on cruelty, but helplessness.

Consequence of Sound by Sarah Kurchak

While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

There’s a wistful quality to the storytelling which softens some of the sharper edges of tragedy and hardship in this undeniably affecting picture.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

[Haigh] hasn’t sacrificed a shred of the understated, observational style, lace-like emotional intricacy and lung-filling feel for landscape that all made his previous film, the Norfolk-set marital drama 45 Years, such a force to be reckoned with.

Screen International by Wendy Ide

There’s a wistful quality to the storytelling which softens some of the sharper edges of tragedy and hardship in this undeniably affecting picture.

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

Lean on Pete is at its potent, stirring best during the opening furlough, when it focuses on this makeshift hobo family as it criss-crosses the Pacific Northwest from one racetrack to the next.

The Film Stage by Rory O'Connor

Lean on Pete is certainly not a film without qualities (credit to the supporting cast and Magnus Nordenhof Jønck’s cinematography in particular), but viewers might just feel the gnawing sense of a director losing his grip on the reins.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

Sadly, the intriguing set up - along with Del and Bonnie - is left behind for a too nakedly state-of-America musing, with everyone Charley happens across having some social ill to portray.