'The Hero' A Review

The Hero is a meta drama about an aging actor Lee(Sam Elliot) grappling with the loss of professional relevance, disease, isolation, and purpose. The film opens on Lee recording a voice over for a barbecue sauce clearly frustrated by the quality of the work. He gets high and goes to a doctor's office where he is diagnosed with cancer. We follow Lee as he grapples with this, gets high with his neighbor and drug dealer Jeremy(Nick Offerman), and attempts to reconcile with his estranged daughter Lucy(Krysten Ritter). Along the way he meets Charlotte(Laura Prepon) a comedian and more-than-casual drug user who he develops a tentative relationship with. Interspersed throughout are dream sequences of a movie Lee would like to make.

Elliot gives an incredible performance- nuanced, quiet, deep, complex. An impressive tour de force turn. Unfortunately the story surrounding this inspiring turn is anything but. Offerman plays well off of Elliot, clearly relishing sharing the screen with the long time legend, funny and charming but devoid of any of the cliched pitfalls that can trap actors playing drug dealers. Ritter, with little screen time is striking and authentic, the story is about Lee not his daughter although it would have been nice had she been afforded a little more screen time. Prepon is serviceable but clearly out of her depth and has a clashing style then the other cast members, there is an awareness and presentation about her performance which is especially distracting given how real Elliot feels. To be fair her's is the most illogical and rote part in the already trite script.

There are flashes of real brilliance, long silent meditative moments where Elliot is allowed to do some incredible work, also some interesting dream or fantasy sequences that are largely left for us to interrupt the meaning of. One of the best scenes of the year so far is Elliot running lines with Offerman. However. Those are all moments and taken as a whole the film is strikingly unoriginal and relies upon tired troupes(unnecessarily) to propel Elliot's character's existential crisis. Most off putting is the big C and the older man-younger woman aspects which telegraph PLOT DEVICE.

A fascinating lead performance fails to elevate a thoroughly mediocre script.

Rent It.