Whenever I hear about a group of critics giving high praise to a movie I immediately am fearful that the movie will be terrible. Most critics tend to look at the “artistic” merit of a film and toss out the entire idea that it should be entertaining. Some go so far as to feel that if a movie entertains it has failed in its mission to articulate some big idea. These same critics fail to realize that most people plopping down anywhere from $5 to $10 to see a movie or even $1 to rent it want something for their money and most want to be entertained. So it was I was concerned when I read high praise for the movie HESHER. Still, I wanted to see it for myself.
I’ll start by saying there were things I liked about HESHER and there were things I hated about it. Did it entertain? In some ways, yes but for the most part it just seemed determined to either offend or show those who would be offended just how uncool they really are. Call me square I guess.
Devin Brochu stars as young T.J., a boy dealing with the loss of his mother. We don’t discover this for sure until later in the film but in having him race his bike chasing a crashed car being towed away you kind of figure it out early on. T.J. isn’t the only one having trouble dealing with the loss. His father Paul (Rainn Wilson) tends to sit around the house, deep into anti-depressants and doing very little. Only T.J.’s grandmother (Piper Laurie) seems to have any life left in her and she’s much older than she acts.
T.J. seems to find himself in trouble most of the time, especially at school. It’s there he runs afoul of the school bully, a youngster who works at the junkyard where T.J.’s crashed family car was taken. Avoiding this bully, T.J. ends up at a housing project and in an act of anger tosses a rock through a window of a house being built. Before he can toss another, out walks a straggly looking vagrant who we learn later is named Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). When security shows, Hesher tosses a grenade their way after informing T.J. that T.J. screwed him over.
Later T.J. sees the same black van Hesher was driving following him, eventually stopping in front of his house. Turning from the window, T.J. finds Hesher in his living room, apparently squatting there now since his last “home” was taken away. The oddest thing is that no one seems to tell Hesher he has to leave except T.J. who is threatened.
Life goes on this way with Hesher witness to all sorts of violent acts against T.J. He never steps in as they occur, but he does later doing things like setting the school bully’s car on fire. It’s Hesher’s way of forcing T.J. to stand up for himself but at the same time shows nothing less than total anarchy. But that’s Hesher’s character, one who lives for the moment and for the most part thinks only of himself. But not always.
T.J. eventually befriends a young woman named Nicole (Natalie Portman) who works as a clerk at the local grocery store. For some reason he connects with her, using her as a substitute for his deceased mother. Their friendship grows but seems just as odd as his strange friendship with Hesher. A later betrayal in T.J.’s eyes leads the two to part ways with the hope of it ending better before the final reel.
The movie crawls along at a steady yet slow seeming pace with little to find attractive in it. Everything has a murky brown, cluttered feel to it. And while you feel an amount of sympathy for the lead characters, you eventually just want to yell get on with it. Hesher, the anti-hero we should be thrilled to root for just seems like a malcontent who helps people only when it benefits himself.
I read someone say that this felt like an update of SHANE. I disagree. In that film we had a lawbreaker who lived with his gun that came along and helped a family find themselves. In this one we have a lawbreaker more inclined to fit the Jack Palance character in SHANE, the evil gunslinger who lived only for himself.
There is one thing to like in this film and that’s the acting. Brochu turns in a fine performance for a young actor, but it would have been nice to see him do more than scream. They even reference that in the gag reel included in the special section. I think Rainn Wilson is a terrific actor, but he’s wasted here doing little more than look pained and depressed from start to finish. Levitt is the one to watch here. Remembering him when he was a child star and seeing him develop into an actor worth watching is remarkable.
So if the acting was the best thing what was the worst? The script. To me it’s becoming cliché to portray the world as one big cesspool, an ugly place where nothing but ugly things happen. The script also uses what I consider to be the laziest thing possible, using vulgar language for shock value. To hear Hesher talk to T.J. about using various appendages and inserting them into various orifices isn’t funny, amusing or helps develop the character though I’m sure many will think it does. To me it just gets in the way of the story and when used as often as it is here it distracts rather than helps. I’ve been known to toss out an expletive a time or two, but here it wasn’t needed.
The other bad item is Natalie Portman being completely wasted here. Her part seems like more of a cameo than an honest role. One scene becomes crucial to the development of T.J.’s life, but other than that her part could have been phoned in.
So on the whole while I enjoyed the performances of some of the cast, I felt that this movie lacked in far too many areas. The rebel without a clue idea has been done better and has been overused. The ideas of what makes a character the cool one here has nothing to do with values and everything to do with self satisfaction. And in the end this film commits the worst mistake of not being entertaining.
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