HERO
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
HERO is a film directed by Stephen Frears, from a script by David Webb Peoples. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, Andy Garcia, with Joan Cusak, Kevin J. O'Connor, James Madio, and with uncredited cameos by Edward Herrman, Fisher Stevens, and Chevy Chase. Rated PG-13, due to mild profanity, mature subject matter.
HERO is Stephen Frears's third Hollywood movie, the earlier two being DANGEROUS LIAISONS and THE GRIFTERS. Frears previously directed the British films THE HIT, MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, and PRICK UP YOUR EARS. HERO is far and away his most "Hollywood" film, evoking as it must, the films of Frank Capra. But of course, Capra was enough of his own artist, enough outside the Hollywood mainstream, that his is one of the few directorial names transformed into a defining adjective by the critics: Chaplinesque, Hitchcockian, Fellini-esque, Spielbergian, Capra-esque. You will be particularly reminded of MEET JOHN DOE when you go to HERO; as Bernie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman) says repeatedly, trust me on this. Frears manages to bring off a bold updating of the Capra-esque vision of the common person as the unsung hero. John Bubber (Andy Garcia), in his turn, says more than once everyone is a hero, but then John Bubber is a liar. Some have called Frears's film cynical. I say rather that he is more grounded in our contemporary sense of the ironic.
The story, written by David Webb Peoples, balances the comedy of a very sharp media satire with the heart-warming story about the nature of heroism. The story is slow and deliberate getting going -- a Frears trademark -- but once the foundations are laid, everything proceeds quickly and quirkily, rich in character development, in emotion and laughs, all laid on by three nearly perfect performances.
Another of the things that makes HERO a Hollywood movie, to a greater degree than DANGEROUS LIAISONS or THE GRIFTERS, is the star power of his cast. Although Glenn Close or Anjelica Huston has an undeniably Hollywood star power, the subject matter and source materials of the earlier movies are sufficiently outside the mainstream as to make them look and feel rather like imports or independents with larger budgets than normal. But here in HERO we have one of Hollywood's living legends, Dustin Hoffman, playing opposite two of the hottest younger stars working today, Geena Davis, fresh from twin successes in THELMA & LOUISE and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, and Andy Garcia, who knocked offf everyone's socks in the last GODFATHER movie and is generally seen as quite the cutie.
Garcia, as the homeless, undecorated Vietnam War veteran becomes the perfect hero, plays his role with great dignity and strength, becoming a real hero. He exudes the moral sweat of a man who is doing the wrong thing for the right reason and turning a dishonest act into one of high purpose and effect. In a word, he's trapped, and no one really wants him to escape.
Geena Davis, as Gale Galey, begins as the ultimate in electronic sob sisters (Chevy Chase, her boss, says, "Everyone knows you're a marshmallow, now act like a professional marshmallow), but ends as a real person whose job is TV news. Davis, of course, looks fantastic, and her acting is likewise praiseworthy. She is endearing, dignified, funny, suitably world-weary, suitably desperate, heartbreaking as she warms to the idea of a hero, first as the one good story she always wanted to report, then as an inspiration that transform her own life.
(Look, by the way, for a hilarious performance by Kevin J. O'Connor as Gale Galey's cameraman.)
But it is Dustin Hoffman, in the role of the petty thief who is the very embodiment of the the concept anti-hero, Hoffman the discoverer of three of the greatest physical shticks in the modern movies, who walks off with the movie. Hoffman, the physical actor, is non-pareil, and the movements and gestures and expressions he has discovered to characterize Bernie rank right up there with those of Razzo in MIDNIGHT COWBOY and as Raymond in RAIN MAN. In addition, Hoffman is heartbreakingly perfect when Bernie begins to acknowledge his own deeply buried compassion and love. Bernie is someone who had a vision of the world so threatening, so devastating he gave up on it and himself for years. Bernie wants only to be a hero to his long estranged son (who oddly seems to have no anger about his father's long absences). Another actor might not have seen the complex pain in Bernie, or the underlying heroism, and it is highly doubtful that many would have so perfectly made visible that pain.
I recommend HERO most highly. Even though the movie is one too many scenes long and despite the fact that even without his rug Chevy Chase is out of place in this serious comedy, it is still worth even a full admission price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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