HERO
A film review by Sean Eric Fagan
Copyright 1992 Sean Eric Fagan
As I was watching HERO, I kept classifying the themes to myself, and came up with: appearances, people's expectations, both of themselves and others, and the truths behind those.
That's not a bad description of what happens in the movie, although there's a bit more, of course. The first appearance, and expectation, is that of Gale Gayley (Geena Davis), who appears to be a cool, professional reporter. But she lets her guard down while receiving an award, to show that she is tired of uncovering the half-truths and deceptions of supposedly "good" people to find the dirt beneath, or even of finding that the "dirt" is, itself, a deception.
The second appearance, and expectation, is that of Bernie Laplante, who is a fence, convicted and awaiting sentencing. The appearance he presents to the world is that of a cold, self-centered, uncaring, unkempt low-life. The world, his ex-wife and kid, and himself have all accepted him as this, and he doesn't want to break out of it.
But, of course, if he didn't, it wouldn't be much of a movie. So, fate conspires to make a hero out of Bernie Laplante, much to his dismay. And while he is being a hero, the world, who expects so little from him, never gives him a chance to explain.
Enter the third, and most obvious, charade: John Bubber (Andy Garcia), a man living in his car, who picks up Bernie after Bernie's car breaks down the night after making himself an unknown hero.
Bubber takes advantage of a situation, and becomes the hero everyone is looking for. And, surprisingly enough, he *is* a hero, in all but deed. He cares about other people, he is humble, he does his best to use his fame and fortune for others. Then, it turns out that he was even an unrecognized hero in Vietnam, and he gets a medal.
Bubber *is* a good man, whom fate has conspired to keep hidden. He takes advantage of fate's conspiracy with Bernie, and the public eats it up. And as the public grows to admire their fake hero, he grows into the role, and continues to be a seemingly-honest and noble person. (In fact, the only thing he is *not* honest and noble about is taking credit for Bernie in the first place.)
The movie takes about one third of its length to set that all up, and does a good job of it. Hoffman is a convincing antiprotagonist, just as Garcia is a convincing antiantigonist.
In the end, of course, the truth is uncovered -- sort of. But not before Bubber becomes a hero, again, in both name and deed, and not before Bernie also becomes another (unknown) hero -- again.
I enjoyed this movie, although it was not enough to grab my entire attention (otherwise, I would not have been able to keep thinking about classifying the themes throughout the movie!). I do recommend it, however. I suppose if I were going to rate it, I would give it a +3 on a -5 to +5 scale.
-- Sean Eric Fagan sef@kithrup.COM
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