A teenager gets a summer job working for a horse trainer and befriends the fading racehorse, Lean on Pete.

The film follows fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson. He wants a home, food on the table and a high school he can attend for more than part of the year. As the son of a single father working in warehouses across the Pacific Northwest, stability is hard to find. Hoping for a new start they move to Portland, Oregon where Charley takes a summer job, with a washed-up horse trainer, and befriends a failing racehorse named Lean on Pete.

Charley, a teen living with his single father, finds work caring for an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete. When he learns Pete is bound for slaughter, the two embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier in search of a place to call home.—AnonymousB

Charley Thompson (Plummer), a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an ageing 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.