HERO. Directed by Stephen Frears; written by David Webb Peoples; produced by Laura Ziskin for Columbia. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis and Andy Garcia. Rated PG-13.
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Hero is enough of a feel-good movie to qualify for Christmas release. But it's never mushy, thanks to generous cross-currents of irony and humor, as well as its delightfully original script.
And in spite of what look at first like some casting blunders, the good performances help to keep it on an even keel, too. Hoffman creates a true original with his petty hustler Bernie Laplante. A totally unlikable slob at first, we eventually develop sympathy for him. But he's still an unlikable slob.
Davis' hot shot TV newswoman is feisty but nice. And Garcia, in the pivotal title role (or is his bum-turned-celebrity the hero of the title or not?) is excellent.
The casting problems I referred to earlier: Garcia isn't old enough to have fought in Vietnam, for one thing, and Hoffman is too old to have been creditably married to Joan Cusack. But all the acting and the characterizations are so good, we don't really care.
The plot is too convoluted and bizarre to summarize easily, but it does involve a heroic rescue, somewhat tempered by larceny, and a whopping case of mistaken identity that is solved to everyone's satisfaction against tremendous odds.
A bit heavy-handed at the ending, there are precious few other missteps in the narrative. The basic story isn't really the main attraction here, anyway.
As he did with this summer's Unforgiven, screenwriter Peoples takes us beyond the simple story and gives us a unusual, unpredictable, and truly special little fable. (I hope he can continue to turn out scripts this good; I'll bet on any movie with his name in the credits to be well worth watching.)
Hero has so much ironic substance, and so many layers of meaning, that it ends up being more than just a movie. It's an astonishingly entertaining modern morality play.
October 7, 1992