In his book The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears, Lesley Brill, an Emeritus Professor of English and Film Studies at Wayne State University, wrote "Hero (an egregiously underrated film, in my view) has at its center the love of the crowd, which has fallen for the embodied idea of a hero, John Bubber (Andy Garcia) an imposter who has assumed that mantle more or less unwillingly."
Inspired in part by such screwball comedies as Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1941) and Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), Hero has a performance by Hoffman as Bernie LaPlante, a seedy hustler who isn't quite as bad off as Hoffman's Ratso in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) but who as a small-time Chicago thief inhabits a similar edgy orbit. LaPlante is also a continuous disappointment to his estranged wife and he steals money from his young lawyer and only advocate. (The former is played by Joan Cusack and latter by sister Susie Cusack, here working together for the first time. The two would band together again eight years later, along with John Cusack and father Dick Cusack in another Stephen Frears movie: High Fidelity, 2000.)
LaPlante is a "me first" type of scoundrel with a foul mouth and unpleasant demeanor, but he clearly has a soft spot for his young son. And just as a broken clock can be right twice a day in Hero he will be given a couple opportunities to shine. The first is when on a rainy night as he's driving in an abandoned area he will witness a plane crash within a few feet of his car. Despite his decidedly un-altruistic character his paternal instincts respond to the cry for help of a young boy who manages to escape the plane wreck and who fears that his dad will die in the burning debris.
Slopping through the mud (which causes him to lose a shoe), LaPlante reluctantly becomes instrumental in saving the lives of the 54 people onboard the plane. This includes Gale Gayley, a TV newswoman played by Geena Davis in a performance that tips its hat in the direction of Rosalind Russell from Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940). As Gale is put in the ambulance, she doesn't want to leave the scene of a good story but strapped to a gurney she gets trotted away anyway. She is unaware that LaPlante - who didn't think twice about stealing her purse while rescuing her - has absconded from the scene with his anonymity intact thanks to all the burning smoke and chaos. The main clue she has to go on becomes the one shoe that has been left behind, thus turning Hero into an unusual Cinderella story.
Frears works with a script by David Webb Peoples, who won an Oscar nomination the same year as Hero for his work on Unforgiven (1992). Frears also teams up with his frequent collaborator and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton. Viewers paying attention to the opening credits will be surprised to see Chevy Chase playing the role of Gale's boss, Deke, in an uncredited role. (Chase was under contract with Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures, and in order to not violate his contract they were unable to use his name to promote the film.)
Unlike Unforgiven, Hero did not exactly receive a hero's welcome and many critics felt it missed the mark. Desson Howe, writing for the Washington Post, felt that Hoffman's "presence overshadows the part, He's a big, V-8 engine booming and rumbling inside a moped." His colleague Hal Hinson, however, also writing for the Washington Post, ends his review of Hero by saying: "It's cagey, funny and vivaciously smart. It may also be one of the worldliest fairy tales ever made, and that rarest of things, a family film with real meat on its bones."
By Pablo Kjolseth
