Movie Review – Local Hero

Local Hero (1983)
Written & Illustrated by Bill Forsyth

I just couldn’t fall in love with this movie in the way I’d heard other people rave about it. There are a good number of people that love Local Hero. I can see why they would. It’s a slightly charming film, not overrun with nasty conflict, told almost like a fairy tale for grown-ups. On paper, these are things that appeal to me. I like films that go in unexpected directions. However, Local Hero never seemed to find its footing from my perspective. It plays around with ideas and characters but doesn’t really come to conclusions about them. Combined with acting that varies wildly in quality from performer to performer, I couldn’t quite latch onto the magic I’d heard about for all these years.

Macintyre (Peter Riegert) is an executive in the employ of Knox Oil and Gas in Houston, Texas. The company’s owner, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster), is quite eccentric and chooses Mac as his representative in coercing the inhabitants of Ferness, Scotland, into selling out so he can build a refinery there. Mac tries to convince Happer to let him conduct the work via telephone, but his boss insists that it must be done in person and to keep an eye on the stars. When Mac gets to Scotland, he teams up with Knox’s local representative Danny (Peter Capaldi). The citizens push back, but Mac doesn’t know they are all reasonably bored with their lives here and are pretending not to want to sell to drive the offer up. Lots of things happen but go nowhere. Then Happer shows up like a deus ex machina, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Filmmaker Bill Forsyth isn’t doing a bad job per se. I think he genuinely loves these characters and this setting. It’s easy to tell because the film is self-indulgent, often taking long detours from the central premise. These detours only sometimes lead anywhere; the payoff is pretty light if they do. One of the most mind-boggling subplots in the picture is one between Happer and his strange therapist. I got what the joke was supposed to be, but Forsyth needed to build on the initial premise. He just keeps making the same joke over and over and over again. I will assume it amused him. 

I can be the same way in my life; if I find something funny, it can keep me laughing for a while, but I can also see how others wouldn’t perceive my angle and think it was ordinary or uninteresting. Comedy is the most complicated type of storytelling, but a core concept is that if you call back a joke, you’re meant to build on it and explore new angles to keep the idea funny. Doing the same thing repeatedly *can* be funny, but that’s harder than building onto an idea.

There’s a story to tell here: an American oil company tries to buy out a small Scottish town. You can do that as a comedy; satire works very well. It can even be a magical realist as Local Hero is, featuring quirky residents and meandering. However, there would need to be an underlying narrative spine, a point to the satire, for anything to work. I saw one Letterboxd user point out that their dad laughed the whole way through and that it made sense because Local Hero is “one long dad joke,” and I think that may be the most accurate summary of the picture. It’s not unfunny; you will probably chuckle somewhat, but it’s not as funny as it thinks. There’s never even a light critique of the oil industry; everything is framed as just a misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up.

There’s no denying Local Hero is a beautiful-looking film. Forsyth captures the Scottish coast quite beautifully. The acting is okay for the most part. The good actors are decent, and the ones who aren’t are, well…not much fun to watch. In particular, I found Happer’s therapist to be the worst character in the film, but the script is heavily to blame for this. The writing is probably the weakest part of the picture. If you are a fan of the films of Richard Curtis movies (Four Weddings and A Funeral, Love Actually), then you will probably like this one. It’s all very light, like cotton candy.

It’s a strange movie for me to write a review for because I didn’t enjoy watching it, but it’s also not bad. Do we have a label for such things? There was such a tongue-in-cheek aspect to every performance that it created this distance for me in becoming invested in the characters. That comes from the attempt to infuse the story with magical realism, but it results in a profoundly dissonant effect for me. I can’t imagine ever rewatching Local Hero unless someone who adores the film wanted to, and that would just be to see if I could figure out why they like it so much. Otherwise, I’ll not be exploring the work of Bill Forsyth any further.