#140RVW
Underrated comedy with heart. Frears is very heavy-handed in presenting Peoples’ excellent screenplay, but it mostly works. Ripe for remake.
What’s more:
Having a very clear inspiration as your guiding star is a dangerous road for a filmmaker. While nothing is truly original, you have to walk a fine line when your vision is too specific. This is the problem faced by director Stephen Frears with Hero. An obvious attempt to make a Frank Capra fairy tale like Meet John Doe, this movie succeeds at it quite well. Possibly too well, as it wears this inspiration on its sleeve and occasionally in your face.
Dustin Hoffman relishes the opportunity to play a really bad guy, although this characterization is itself one-sided. A flawed man, he hustles and small-times his way through life, but of course the film shows his bruised but not broken humanity and decency when most needed.
Andy Garcia and particularly Geena Davis round out the main players very well. Amazing how Garcia once seemed a lock for greatness; still don’t know what went sideways. Davis lacks subtlety here, but really provides a ton of energy and clearly gets the tone right.
The tone, however, is erratic. There are great quiet moments, but too few of them. Everyone seems to do a lot of shouting and yelling. The whole 1940’s nostalgia thing plays with mixed results; the snappy newsroom dialogue won’t replace His Girl Friday, but it plays. The patriotic music and fascinated crowd shots don’t. It’s all just a bit much.
I’d love to see this re-edited. Although I don’t think that’s possible – the physical source material may not be salvageable. I don’t know if it’s the vision of Frears or his frequent DP Oliver Stapleton, but the movie just kind of looks crappy. It may of course be the home video transfers, but I sort of doubt it; there’s a very dark, bluish tone to the whole thing that makes it very cold. I think you’d need to reshoot.
And remaking it would be an effort that I’d highly support, because I absolutely love this movie. I really do. The message is a nice mix of optimism and cynicism, I like the dialogue, the actors, the story. It’s a flawed gem, but one I unhesitatingly recommend.
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
| Main Cast | Dustin Hoffman Bernie Laplante, Geena Davis Gale Gayley, Andy Garcia John Bubber, Joan Cusack Evelyn |
| Rating | PG-13 |
| Release Date | Fri 02 Oct 1992 UTC |
| Director | Stephen Frears |
| Genres | Comedy, Drama |
| Plot | A not-so-nice man rescues passengers from a crashed airliner, only to see someone else take credit. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 117 |
| Tagline | One selfless act of courage can really mess up your whole day. |
| Writers | Laura Ziskin (story) &, Alvin Sargent (story) … |
| Year | 1992 |