Hero
Directed by Stephen Frears
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Hero—a cynical comedy that rattles along like an M1 tank run amuck on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington during the Desert Storm festivities—targets a nation obsessed with accumulation, selfishness, waste, and self-delusion. Despite some ill-guided gunnery, the aim isn’t too bad as Hero blasts away at the beast we may very well have become.
The crew of writers, comprised of Hollywood heavies Laura Ziskin (producer of Pretty Woman), Alvin Sargent (Academy Award-winning screenwriter for Ordinary People), and David Webb Peoples (Unforgiven), cross-hair a preposterous media travesty.
The story runs like this. As gorgeous and glib TV news reporter Gale Gayley (Geena Davis)—a redhead with hypnotic blue eyes and full, microphone-caressing lips—is flying home after winning a Silver Mike Award for a sensational story she has soullessly exposed, the plane’s engine suddenly flames out, forcing a crash-landing. With the emergency door jammed and electrical fires threatening to ignite seeping fuel, all 54 passengers and crew are about to char.
Only one man can save them: a grimy, glamorless hustler/thief/fence named Bernie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman), whose car is nearly smashed as the plane crashes into a bridge. But despite the pilot’s anguished pleas and the screams of the passengers, Bernie is in no hurry to wrench the emergency door open. Bernie’s code—as we’ve heard him explain to his cherished ten-year-old son—is “keep a low profile” and “look out for number one.” Getting killed rescuing a load of faceless, screaming humanity doesn’t excite him.
Nor does Bernie relish muddying his $100 Florsheims. But the frantic pilot’s calls nag him into bumbling action. With maddening slowness, he tugs off his stolen Florsheims and stumbles to the burning wreck with a zombie-like, Charlie Chaplin trudge and shoulders the emergency door open, only to be trampled by stampeding passengers.
Then suddenly, Bernie’s begrudging assistance is transformed into selfless heroism when a boy who resembles his own son pleads for Bernie to rescue his trapped father. Bernie—now supercharged with purpose—stumbles down the smoke-filled aisle, pulling out trapped passengers, including the injured Gale Gayley (his everyday mentality momentarily returns when he remembers to steal her purse). Seconds later, the plane detonates, as does Gale’s biggest story yet—”The Angel of Flight 104.”
Gale’s television station trumpets a million-dollar reward for the “hero”; the only problem is that Bernie has slipped away, leaving only one muddy Florsheim 10-B behind. Moreover, Gale remembers her rescuer’s face only as a sooty smudge. So, Cinderella-like, the search is on for the man with the matching Florsheim, as the entire nation watches with enthralled adulation.
But … Bernie has given the shoe to the even grimier homeless man John Bubber (Andy Garcia), and Bubber—not Bernie—claims the million dollars.
Thus to the woesome real hero, Bernie. And thus to the media high priestess Gale Gayley, who flings her womanhood to the imposter like a smitten though expertly experienced sophomore. And thus to the fawning, even drooling American public, who in this movie wouldn’t know a hero from the dogcatcher if it weren’t for the media hype and the one-million-dollar reward that defines heroism with a price tag. Ah, what fools we witless television-age mortals be….
Writers Ziskin and Sargent say the idea for Hero came when they were watching the 1988 presidential primaries and were smitten by the notion of “television’s power to instantly create identity and reputation with a single act or image.” The public doesn’t know what to believe until it is told what to believe.
But all’s not well in this cinematic M1 shelling of our national psyche. Dustin Hoffman never seems entirely comfortable as Bernie and resorts to a one-dimensional characterization, using the unblinking “I ain’t got no brain” mannerisms he developed for the idiot savant lead in Rainman. There’s no doubt that Hoffman’s “The Star,” but his utterances have an “I’m reciting my lines” quality.
Joan Cusack as Bernie’s vexing and unbelieving ex-wife Evelyn turns in a much more taut, convincing performance that drives the creaking plot gears with high octane, even though her lines, too, contradict her character. At one point she explains that Bernie would never do anything heroic “because it’s against his religion.” Later, she says that in emergencies, “something” just takes over in Bernie and wonderful, unexpected things happen. Where that “something” is the rest of the time is apparently never clear to her nor, more importantly, to Hoffman, who gives up early on making Bernie a real character. True, a crisis reveals his real character, but an explanation of this character the rest of the time just doesn’t appear.
But where Hoffman sags under the ironplate of the improbable in Hero, there are zesty supporting actors that keep Hero moving at a breathy search and destroy speed. Stephen Tobolowsky is one of these, turning in a fine supporting performance as Wallace, Gale’s station manager, who is slick, well-groomed as a glossy red fox, and very fast. In fact, if it weren’t for the high-tuned supporting roles by Joan Cusack, her sister Susie, Maury Chaykin, Don Yesso, Lee Wilkof, and Raymond Fitzpatrick, to name a few, Hero would have thrown a tread and died on the asphalt from the start.
The real dead-eye gunning in Hero that makes the script a hit as social commentary comes with John Bubber, the imposter. Irony after irony is blasted as actor Andy Garcia blithely negotiates the role. It turns out that Bubber is a Vietnam war hero who would have received the Medal of Honor “if any officers had been around to write him up.” Instead, with his service and heroism ignored, he becomes just another homeless wreck.
Of course, now that Bubber is the media phenomena known as “The Angel of Flight 104,” the Pentagon catches up and pins that medal on, despite the dearth of officer witnesses. Cleaned up, shaved, trimmed, and haberdashed, Bubber the one-time Vietnam loser is now, thanks to the media, given the ultimate victory parade for a feat he did not do, with penthouse accommodations, racks of suits, piles of shoes, a fabulous girl hanging on his lips, and $400 dinners for two.
Meanwhile, while Bubber is feted, dined, and loved, Bernie languishes in prison while other unredeemed homeless wrecks populate the scenes like ghostly extras without the saving grace of media gimmickry, much less anyone to open their own personal “jammed emergency doors.” As one media lackey says, “Don’t reach out!” You’ll get AIDS, loose a quarter, and waste your precious time if you let America’s uncurables pull you over the edge. Forget “do-gooding.” In Hero, no heroic value is placed on giving the hopeless homeless a hand up. There is no video-crafted spotlight on them. No pot of gold for being a saint unless the media happens to blink its false eyelashes your way.
But in front of the media’s cameras and the swell of admirers, Bubber, who is not only cunning but gentle and sensitive, plays the part of “The Angel of Flight 104” better than the real, cynical “Angel” ever could. Bubber holds the Tv audiences of the nation in warm-hearted awe, and this is where Hero veers off Pennsylvania Avenue on its own cynically guided route.
Despite the fine example set by “The Angel of Flight 104,” America never rallies from its ignoble “looking-out-for-number-one” stance. The rest of the Vietnam losers are never thanked and adulated. The homeless still populate the streets like open sores begging for droplets of medicine. The muzzle-flashes in Hero show American society as a hopeless disarray of overfed sheep, without individual vision, without individual conscience, and without the energy to get up and change the channel. The once formidable biceps of a nation that could change the living standards and political freedoms of the world has been replaced by the scrawny, octopus-like ogling of a thrill-seeking video news camera which, like a hypodermic in the hands of the Pied Piper, pumps cowardly mindlessness into our veins and leads us around like rats rather than the revolutionary democrats we once were. And perhaps still are.
Finally, Bubber’s conscience and confusion catches up with him, and he tries to kill himself—only to be saved from leaping from the ledge of the Drake Hotel by Bernie, who wants a cut of the cash but is glad to have an imposter remain in his place to take care of the hype. “I don’t take credit,” quips the normally inarticulate Bernie. “I’m a cash kind of guy.”
Maybe Bubber, the diplomatic imposter and true hero, is right when he says, “I think we’re all heroes if you catch us at the right moment.” But in the skewed, clanking, and muddled attack of this M1 that had no business to begin with on Pennsylvania Avenue, Hero says that Americans are only heroes when they know the media says so.
Are Americans really that low? Or is Hero off-target?