Hero is a
movie you can’t watch twice—not just because it’s too long, but because it
lacks good cohesion between its main story and subplots. That’s the core issue.
There are scenes that needed to be cut entirely, and others that would’ve
worked better if they were shorter. These changes could’ve made the movie much
stronger.
The movie starts
strong, introducing us to Bernard LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman), who’s in court for
selling and possessing stolen goods. While there, he steals a purse. Right
away, you know this character isn’t going to be forgettable.
The film then
builds a world around Bernard. We meet his ex-wife and son, see how he gets by
selling stolen credit cards, and witness all the shady things he does to make
money. Then, the movie introduces another world—this one centered around news
reporters. At first, you wonder how these two worlds will collide and hope
it’ll be something cool. The lead in this other world is Gale (Geena Davis), a
news anchor. She and her colleagues are weirdly oblivious to reality, to the
point where it feels like they have “shit for brains.”
Why do I say
that? Here’s the plot: Bernard, the no-good human mentioned earlier, happens to
be near a plane crash. He runs into the burning plane and saves over 50 people.
Many witnesses see him during these heroic acts, which are portrayed with some
overacting. Dustin Hoffman really leans into the “I don’t care about others,
only myself and my glory” vibe during the rescue scene.
After the incident, Bernard leaves, tells his friend Bubber (Andy Garcia) what happened, and ends up in jail for the same crime he was in court for earlier. Bubber seizes the moment, claiming he was the one who saved the people on the plane, and even gets a reward. Now, how Bubber tells the story—and why the news station believes him—is where things get shaky. The writers use a “magical other shoe” as the key piece of evidence, which you’ll understand if you watch the movie.
The shoe is
shown on TV, but let’s assume only one pair exists in the world. How does the
entire news station fall for Bubber’s story without doing a proper check? No
one suspects a thing—not even the people who saw LaPlante. It doesn’t occur to
them that Bubber is much taller than the man they saw. Even Gale, while
interviewing Bubber, doesn’t notice anything off about his presence.
To make things
worse, LaPlante gets out of jail and tries to tell his story, but no one
listens. From the moment he saved the people on the plane (before going to
jail), he hasn’t been able to tell his story to a single soul except Bubber.
Why? Because nobody gives him the chance. It’s bizarre how no one cares to
verify if Bubber is lying.
When Gale
finally hears the truth—not from LaPlante—she concludes that LaPlante is
blackmailing Bubber. How she jumps to that conclusion after finding evidence
that LaPlante might be the real hero is something I wish the writers could
explain.
There are so
many things wrong with this movie, but the main issues are its excessive length
and the lack of cohesion between the stories.
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